It is still looked upon with deep emotion here. The airlift is commemorated every year, and several streets in the city are named after the servicemen who died during it. Later that day, walking over to the edge of the airfield, where German children hung onto the fence, Halvorsen distributed chewing gum and learned that in the desperate first days of the airlift nobody had remembered candy for the children. So on future flights, he started dropping chocolates and raisins by parachutes that he fashioned from handkerchiefs, and soon, children in the United States were donating their candy for the children of Berlin. Fifty years later, Halvorsen drew one conclusion.
Berlin remains Berlin.
In the bleachers, Traudel Jannietz put her can of Crisco back in her bag, her mundane but comforting symbol of a great moment in history. That the people of Berlin will not be forgotten. As the planes came and went and came and went again, the airlift became a sharing of the soul. It was, Clinton said, a story that tells people never to give up, never to lose faith. Freedom is worth standing up for.