"On toda?s edition of Dakota Midday, host Paul Guggenheimer began with Edwin Gere, who was on the phone from Hammondsport, New York. Today is the 60th anniversary of the official start of the Berlin Airlift. Gere flew 184 missions during the airlift and wrote the book,† The Unheralded: Men and Women of the Berlin Blockade and Airlift.