Event Education-Berlin Airlift

BERLIN AIRLIFT BY MIKE ELLICOTT

In an unsuccessful attempt to force the Western Allies out of Berlin, the Soviet Union blockaded all ground transportation to that City beginning on April 24, 1948.  The United States, Great Britain, and France vowed to keep West Berlin alive and free. Over the next eleven months, 277,000 individual flights carried over 2.3 million tons of food and supplies from West Germany to Berlin, keeping its 2.0 million residents free and dealing the Soviet Union a stunning defeat. Learn about this fascinating story of courage, resourcefulness, and perseverance from Retired Army Colonel and Amateur Historian Mike Ellicott.

Mike Ellicott is a retired Army Officer and a retired higher education facilities officer. He now has time to spend on his lifelong love of history and he and his wife Marilyn currently lead tours of the Gettysburg and Normandy Battlefields, Germany, where they lived for 14 years, and the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. He completed a twenty-six-year career in the Army Corps of Engineers, retiring as a Colonel and Commander of the Corps of Engineers’ Europe District in Frankfurt, Germany. He went on to a 16-year career in Higher Education Facilities Construction and Operations and retired again as the Vice Chancellor for Facilities Planning and Construction for the Texas Tech University System in Lubbock, TX. He earned Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Mechanical Engineering and taught engineering at the Military Academy at West Point and at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA. He was a Registered Professional Engineer in Virginia. Mike and Marilyn live in Collierville, TN. They have two sons, Mike Jr., also a retired Engineer Colonel, and Randy, a Hospital Facilities Compliance Specialist, and three grandchildren. He is the Past President of the Friends of Morton Museum in Collierville and a Director of the Engineers’ Club of Memphis.

Access will be through GoToWebinar.  Instructions and Connectivity Link will be forwarded via email to all registrants upon registration, six days prior and again 1 hour prior to the event.  Making the connection is quick and easy only requiring a computer and Internet connectivity from wherever you chose to watch the event. Your questions help drive the meetings, and we will be there to help each other.