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Page 2 of the May 17 edition of Stars and Stripes included a photo of Gail Halvorsen with a brief identification as the “Candy Bomber” (“Sweet memories”). Many of your readers might want to read his story in “The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America’s Finest Hour” by Andrei Cherny, published in 2008. It is a fascinating story of the 1948 Berlin airlift that would make any American proud by association.

In part the book reads, “Some people’s lives are like a feather in the wind, carried from breeze to breeze, buffeted by events. Others travel a steady path they lay out for themselves, or one that their fate or family bequeaths to them. But then there are others for whom their entire life comes down to a single instant that makes sense of all that occurred before and shapes everything that happens after.”

Dr. Celia Entwistle

Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany

Rash acts easily predicted

As an atheist, I must say that the last few days have been fairly entertaining. Listening to the news coverage of Harold Camping’s latest failed prediction of the Rapture and watching the day it was supposed to occur pass by uneventfully has made me once again thankful I gave those fairy tales up years ago.

Leading up to the supposed Rapture, I have seen many news articles describing retirees giving up their life’s savings, families spending their child’s college fund on “preaching the good word” and even people committing suicide in anticipation of one kook’s claims that the world is going to end. While my cynical side wants to say the gullible deserve to be fleeced for believing such nonsense, another part of me can’t help but feel sorry for all who have been affected by Camping’s delusional claims.

Staff Sgt. Casey Leavings

Portales, N.M.

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