Sweet! Helicopter bombs elementary school with candy
PHOENIX — The logistical hurdles that led to a black helicopter raining candy on a Mesa elementary school Thursday morning would have been daunting for anyone.
First, there was the delicate matter of getting clearance to hover an aircraft over two Mesa public schools. During school hours.
Second, there was the conundrum of how 200 or so packets of chocolates and lollipops would find their way to the ground. Ideally, of course, they would all be attached to tiny cloth parachutes.
Third, someone would need to convince the students at Ishikawa Elementary School to hand over their extra Halloween candy. As much as they could spare.
Finally, in a relatively close-knit community, the questions remained: Could the people at Ishikawa keep this a secret from the students at Wilson Elementary, whom they wanted to surprise? And, in a post-YouTube age, would the kids even care if they began to see candy falling from the sky?
But once Lisa McGee, a parent volunteer at Ishikawa, had latched onto the idea, she couldn’t shake it from her mind. She got to work.
The spark for the idea, McGee said, had come from a family holiday tradition of her own.
For the past several years, she and her kids would watch Christmas From Heaven: The True Story of the Berlin Candy Bomber, narrated by Tom Brokaw. The movie recounted the story of Col. Gail Halvorsen, a U.S. Army pilot who flew supplies into Berlin during World War II. As he flew, Halvorsen noticed German children would cluster by the fences at the end of the runway at Tempelhof Air Base.
One day, Halvorsen approached them and offered the kids the only thing he had in his pocket: two sticks of Wrigley’s Doublemint gum. As the story goes, he promised the children he would drop candy from his plane the next day — and that they would know it was him because he would wiggle his wings. Sure enough, the next day Halvorsen dropped chocolate from his and others' personal rations, fashioned with tiny handkerchief parachutes.
The children were overjoyed. Soon, Halvorsen began making regular candy drops, a move that triggered donations and attention from around the world. He earned the nicknames “Uncle Wiggly Wings” and “Rosinenbomber” (“The Candy Bomber” in German). His acts of kindness would endear him to hundreds of German children, many of whom would still remember him decades later for the hope and joy he gave them during a traumatic time.
The touching story has always lingered with McGee, who enjoyed it for its message that one act of kindness can lead to many greater things — until one day, last year, it became more than just a poignant tale.
“I'm driving down the road and I thought, oh my gosh, how cool would it be to re-enact this book at school?” McGee said. “It was just this idea that popped in my head.”
McGee approached her PTO president at Ishikawa. Then the principal at the time, Shelley Heath. To her surprise, they were both on board.
“She is so creative,” Heath said of McGee. “I mean, the stuff that lady comes up with. And then she just goes with it.”
Almost offhandedly, McGee also reached out via a Facebook connection to Halverson. At 95, he still does commemorative candy drops, and he splits his time between Utah and southern Arizona. He told her he was thrilled with the idea but ultimately couldn’t work the date into his schedule, McGee said.
So instead, McGee turned to a church friend, Clyde Bawden, whom she knew had a granddaughter at Ishikawa and also flew helicopters for fun.
“I just was with him one night at dinner out with some friends,” McGee said. “Hey, Clyde, I have this wacky idea. You can say no …”
Bawden didn’t hesitate. He was familiar with the “Berlin Candy Bomber” story and had always admired Halvorsen. Also, he once had been asked to drop Twinkies to a church group in the mountains. (They had been learning about manna from heaven, he explained.)
Bawden told McGee he would be happy to do it, as long as it was OK with the school district and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. Remarkably, both cleared the project. The candy drop, as they say, was a go.
Heath had moved from Ishikawa to become the principal at Wilson Elementary, some 8 miles to the southeast. A whole other program — “Living Books,” in which teachers tried to bring some aspect of a book to reality for the students — had sprung from McGee’s original idea. Still, she had not forgotten about the helicopter. By this time, so much time had elapsed that a new school year had begun.
McGee broached the idea again with Heath, who was still enthusiastic. In fact, she suggested the students at Ishikawa could make the candy packets, and the “drop” could take place at Wilson.
Cheryl Namie, the media specialist at Ishikawa, arranged for all the classes to read Christmas From Heaven. The teachers explained to their students that they would be doing something similar for their friends at Wilson Elementary — but it would be a surprise. The idea, they emphasized, was that great things could come from little things. If they all did their part, something amazing could happen.
The school collected a remarkable amount of Halloween candy. The younger grades took on the task of putting the candy into tiny plastic bags and decorating them with stickers. The older grades fashioned the parachutes, using hole punchers, string and pieces of white fabric. They wrote on each of the chutes in neat letters: “Happy Holidays from the Ishikawa Candy Bombers!”
Meanwhile, all 850 kids at Wilson Elementary School were also assigned to read Christmas From Heaven. But they didn’t know exactly why.
Finally, it was drop day.
Shortly before 9 a.m. on Dec. 10, a clear Thursday morning, Clyde Bawden touched down on the field of Ishikawa Elementary School in his black Robinson R44 helicopter. Even though the children were seated a good distance away, he could see "the joy in the kids' faces."
"I was quite taken aback at how excited they were to be part of the whole thing," he said.
Ishikawa’s new principal, David Shill, thanked everyone for the part they had played and told them how excited Halvorsen was that they were doing this, and how he regretted he couldn’t be there. Then he reminded them all of the book’s message: From small things come big things.
Bawden loaded two boxes of carefully assembled candy parachutes into his helicopter. Shill climbed aboard. To the children’s cheers, the helicopter lifted off and turned to the southeast.
Over at Wilson Elementary, the schoolyard was still empty at 9 a.m., save for three rows of kindergartners. Heath and McGee paced the yard, waiting for a text that would tell them the helicopter had taken off from Ishikawa. After a few minutes had passed, Heath made a school announcement that included their code word (“kindness”), signaling all her teachers to start bringing their students outside.
At 9:06, the helicopter circled overhead. Only a quarter of the students had come out of the building; the rest of the students were still filing out.
McGee frantically texted the pilot: “Hover!!!”
Up in the helicopter, Bawden could see the kids were not on the field yet. He and his partner, John Hogle, made several more wide circles around the school, until at last there were 16 neat lines of children on the ground. All of the students from Wilson Elementary were outside, and their collective excitement was growing louder as the helicopter approached.
“Oh, my God, it’s getting closer!” kindergartner Amberlie Duff shouted.
“Oh, my God, I see the wiggly wings!” her friend screamed.
(It was unclear what wings on the helicopter she had seen wiggle, but When a reporter asked about it, Duff explained for her friend: “We learned about it in the liberry.”)
The helicopter hovered about 200 feet above the schoolyard before making the first drop. From the aircraft, dozens of tiny parachutes fell toward the field. Some twisted and dropped straight down, while others fluttered more gracefully.
On the schoolyard, 850 mesmerized students screamed with glee.
Several teachers beamed and held their phones skyward, taking what video they could in the direct sunlight. Off to the side, McGee blinked tears from her eyes.
By 9:10 a.m., the helicopter was gone. The candy remained on the field, and yards away, all the students from Wilson Elementary could talk about was what they had just seen.
“What’s that special message from the book?” Heath asked 850 kids from a megaphone. “Raise your hand if you can remember.”
Hundreds of hands shot up.
A third-grader, Brayden Smith, was the one she called on.
“From little things come big things,” he said.
Follow Amy B. Wang on Twitter: @amybwang