## The Man Behind the Wings
Halvorsen’s public identity as the Candy Bomber was genuine but partial. He was also, separately from that identity, a career Air Force officer who worked on space systems, commanded air bases, taught at universities, and served twice as a religious missionary overseas.
After his Air Force retirement in 1974, he served as Assistant Dean of Student Life at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, from 1976 to 1986. The role was consistent with his public activities during that period: he was a speaker, a representative of a particular kind of American experience, and he worked with young people. He and his wife Alta served as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in London from 1986 to 1987 and in St. Petersburg, Russia, from 1995 to 1997. The Russia posting was particularly resonant: a man who had participated in the standoff with the Soviet Union now serving in what had been the Soviet Union’s second city.
Alta Jolley Halvorsen, whom he had married on April 16, 1949, three months after returning from Berlin, died on January 25, 1999. They had been married for fifty years. Halvorsen married Lorraine Pace in 2004 and continued his public activities. He later lived on a farm in Spanish Fork, Utah, with winters spent in Arizona.
He contracted COVID-19 in early 2021, at age 100, and recovered. His last flight had been in December 2019. He continued to make public appearances and speak about the airlift until his health prevented it. He died on February 16, 2022, in Provo, Utah, of respiratory failure. He was 101 years old.