From Research to Images: Working on Wings of Freedom

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Creating Wings of Freedom

Bibi LeBlanc

When Wings of Freedom was created, the story of the Berlin Airlift did not come to life through research alone. It also came alive through sketches, conversations, revisions, and countless hours of translating history into images.

Nadia Vires worked closely with me during the creation of Wings of Freedom, helping turn extensive historical research into visual scenes that could be understood, felt, and remembered.

Coming into the project with little prior knowledge of the Berlin Airlift, Nadia discovered the story through the creative process itself. Her reflections offer a rare behind-the-scenes look at how history can be learned, absorbed, and carried forward through visual storytelling.

Below, Nadia shares her experience in her own words. The video appears underneath the text.

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Nadia Vires reflects on working behind the scenes on Wings of Freedom and discovering the story of the Berlin Airlift through visual storytelling.

Nadia’s Story
Visual Concepts Editor for Wings of Freedom

I'm Nadia Vires. I worked with Bibi LeBlanc while she was writing the book Wings of Freedom, which is the story, the illustrated story of the Berlin Airlift. When I started working with Bibi, I knew nothing about the airlift at all.

I had very little knowledge of German history, maybe American history for that fact, but we were creating coloring books together and Bibi is a storyteller. She aims to have educational coloring books that bring stories to life with her images.

And Bibi is from Berlin and she just was fascinated with the story of the airlift and said, “Hey, let's make a coloring book about it. Let's tell the story. Let's bring history to life.” And we did. So, Bibi did all the research.

She spoke to so many incredible people, read so many books, watched movies and videos, and then came to me and said, “time to do the images.”

So, my part was to work with one of our designers. Our designer who actually worked on the book was from the Ukraine, and it was so cool to have that cross-cultural connection.

She was just as in the dark about the story as I was when we began. When we began working on the book, it was day in, day out, constant meetings to create these images actually behind me. They started as sketches on post-it notes and Bibi and I would have meetings for hours every week, every other day, and just collaborate.

One of the coolest things is I got to learn so many details ls about the airlift just by working on the designs, understanding what people were wearing, understanding the key elements to General Lucius Clay and what he would have worn, what Gail Halverson would have worn, and all of these different elements of what was important was really cool to understand.

The longer I worked on the book, the more I understood. We weren't just making pictures. We were trying to take one of the greatest things that's ever happened in human history and put it into a really palpable, tangible way for people to just get it.

And it was really, really cool. It was such an honor to work with Bibi every single day. She poured her heart over every single image. She approved every single one. It was her idea to say, hey, let's send it to this person and this person and this person and edits kept happening, changes kept being made, and then the book was born and it was one of the coolest things I've ever gotten to do.

After the book was done, I had the honor of getting a couple of copies and sending it, sharing it to all my friends and family who, even having a family with a military background, an extensive one. Not many of them knew about the airlift and it was so cool to watch generations later people light up when they hear about this story because it really is just one of the most incredible things after a period of so much intensity and so much that divided so many nations.

It was such a beautiful act of love and unity that I don't think we should ever stop talking about and I think the more generations that know about it, even if it's just something you do randomly in your job and then your whole world blows up because of it, I think it's important to know about it.

One of the fun things about working on this project is you're seeing these images, all of these images behind us, you're seeing them all the time. And so, one of the things that we would do is we had little nicknames for different images.

We would have shortened forms and nicknames for the people involved. So General Lucius Clay, for example, his image is over here behind me somewhere. And in the sketch, I referred to him as Lulu, which is a shortened form of Lucius.

I don't know if it's the most respectful, but it was a fond nickname. It was very much an endearment.

Another really fun thing about some of the images is a lot of them are represented with stick figures and arrows pointing to what things should be.

I remember when I told my dad that we were gonna start working on this book. My father was an officer in the United States Air Force for 20+ years, and he was so excited.

He knew a lot about the airlift because he has a degree in history, US history, but he had no idea all of the intricacies that I even got to bring to him. And it was really cool. Every day I worked on it, I feel like he learned more as I learned more.

And a really thing is for my family Thanksgiving after the book was finished, after Wings of Freedom was published, Bibi let me bring a copy to my family Thanksgiving. And we casted her presentation on the airlift on the TV, and we all learned so much.

And I got to sit with my 80-year-old grandfather from Texas and teach him about the Berlin airlift for the first time in his 80th year of life. It's just one of the most incredible things about how this story can inspire someone who's in their 20s or someone who's in their 80s.

No matter who you are, it teaches you something about you, about the world and about humans.