The Pilot Who Found God in the Sky Over Vietnam

On this episode of Our American Stories, Dick Erickson was a young Marine helicopter pilot flying over Vietnam when everything went quiet. His radio was dead, his instruments were failing, and the jungle below offered no clear place to land. Alone in the cockpit, he began to pray. What happened next stayed with him for life. In that silence, he felt a calm that didn’t come from training or instinct. Dick joins us to tell his remarkable story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American Stories, and we tell stories about
everything here on this show, and often that means telling
stories of faith, because so many millions of people in
this country well, faith plays an important role in their life. Today,
our own Joey Cortez brings us the story of a
marine who had, let's just say, a surreal experience as

(00:30):
a helicopter pilot in Vietnam.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Here's Joey Dick.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Erickson was a marine helicopter pilot in Vietnam and would
go on to start his own retail tire business. But
before he became the man he is today, he was
a different man. As a student, quick to anger, Dick
often got into trouble.

Speaker 4 (00:53):
I was fooling with one of my friends and the
principle was in and out because it was a study hall,
and we were goofing off. In comes the principal and
he gets after me to start with, and my buddy's
standing behind him waving his hands to get me to laugh.
And so here I am trying to be serious with

(01:16):
my principle, and so I'm trying to look around him, like, hey,
someone's behind you waving his hands at me. So finally
he turns around and Marvin gets his hands down quick
enough that he didn't see his hands up, so now
he's chewing him out. And I get into the deal
and I'm waving my hands except when he turns around,

(01:37):
I got my hands straight in the ear and he
slaps me, and next thing you know, we're on the ground.
I was on knocked over rows of chairs, and I
was swearing at him afterwards. Oh, I completely lost it.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
And in college, with the distraction of girls and booze,
his grades suffered.

Speaker 4 (02:00):
I got noticed two weeks in him that quarter that
I'm out of school for a year.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
That was for grades, and I can.

Speaker 4 (02:07):
Remember stand out in front of the big main hall
with the.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Guy gave me the news.

Speaker 4 (02:11):
Who was the head of our music department, mister vanvlistens
here and I said, doctor, I said, I mean if
a year. I said, do you understand they're going to
draft me? He said, Ericson, you should have understood that
when you're out playing around. Just before I went to

(02:33):
the Marine Corps, a friend of mine came up to
me who's a year older than me, and he'd been
in the army. He was home, he's out of the army,
and he said, Dick you'll never make it in.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
The Marine Corps.

Speaker 4 (02:44):
I said, why is that, Gordie, And he said, because
one of the drilling stories be going to get in
your face and touch you, and you're going to lose
it and you'll be in a brig. And that comment
kept me from retaliating, and so I had those growth deals.
For me was to not screw up my life.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
Getting ahead of the draft, Dick enrolled an officer training
school to become a marine helicopter pilot. Though he was
a Christian, Dick hadn't really owned that identity for himself,
and while in Vietnam, he encountered what some might call
a god wink that would help him become the man
he is today.

Speaker 4 (03:26):
One time, we got this prisoner and they wanted to
take him down to the coastline at the division headquarters
for interrogation. And that was probably an hour and a
half flight for us, and we had single engine aircraft
and we did not like to fly at night over
the mountains. So they said, guys, crank him up, let's go.

(03:49):
So we cranked up our helicopters.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Two of us.

Speaker 4 (03:51):
Two helicopters went down there. We dropped him off and
then we said, well, we'll take We took him the
most expedient way.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
It was over the mountain.

Speaker 4 (04:00):
We could have kind of gone down through valleys and stuff,
probably taking us an extra thirty minutes or so, but
we went kind of the more direct route. Well, trouble is,
every time you're flying something needs some needs.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Of the helicopter come up.

Speaker 4 (04:17):
You'd be missing something or you'd need some sort of
parts brought up by the guys the next day. So
we were trying to get up with our base station
that night, which was up up the coast a little further,
and the static was so bad that night and we
couldn't We couldn't make contact. And we'd listened with and

(04:37):
it'd be something like we'd always use Seer popa base.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Which would be our base. This is Syr Papa one
five would be our call sign.

Speaker 4 (04:49):
And so we were going back and forth like this,
trying to connect with our base, and the static was
so bad. Finally gets absolutely cleared up, no sound, and
this voice comes up and says, this is the Lord
I will relay for. You couldn't hear anything at all,

(05:15):
didn't hear the engines running.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Absolutely silence.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
The voice said, I will I will get your message
to your base camp. Trouble is, we never got back
on the radio. No one talked to each other. You know,
you think someone would quickly say who said that?

Speaker 2 (05:37):
It was so.

Speaker 4 (05:40):
I don't know what the word would be, but it
was so. It was such a hit on us. It
was just like the Lord had spoken and in my
mind he had. No one says anything. We got about
twenty minutes to get up to the base case no
one speaks. Finally we had to get on the radio

(06:01):
to get Clarence to land at the base.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Got on it, everyone jumps out of the aircraft. Did
you hear that? Did you?

Speaker 4 (06:10):
Everyone heard it, but no one Everyone has affected the
point they could not talk about it till a hit ground.
It was absolutely the most startling, scary thing I'd ever heard.
Did I ever hear another voice like that? My thirteen months?
That was completely clear?

Speaker 2 (06:33):
No.

Speaker 4 (06:35):
So that brought my spiritual It was kind of a
wake up call for me. I've better to get my
head straight here. There is some things beyond just what
we were going.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
Through, which didn't fully sink in until after coming back
from Vietnam and marrying his wife Diane.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
We went on a marriage account.

Speaker 4 (07:00):
So you have a couple of couples that over the
weekend starts Thursday night, and they just talk about how
to have a good marriage.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
That had probably been a new Catholic about a year.
Diane had been after me.

Speaker 4 (07:13):
To go to this event, and she said, Dick, I said, okay.
They said, we can't take any wine. I'm not going
to take a bottle of wine. She said, what else
do you want to do? So I said, okay, if
I take the wine, yeah, okay. So I go and
about half the group, the husband and wives are quite friendly,

(07:36):
you know, arms around their wives and all that. And
I've never been about showing a lot of affection in public,
so I'm looking around him, going, I got to put
up with this for two and a half days. And
so we go through this. By this is Thursday night.
By Friday night, I'm sitting a little closer to Diane
and I'm kind of enjoying us. By Saturday, marm ronder,

(08:01):
I am into this. And now it's confession time. What
the priest did? He would come up to your room,
He'd go from room to room in this hotel and
have confession. And then you go into the bathroom for
your penance, and I'm still kind of new at this.
I'm you know, I've been through a few confessions, but
I hadn't overworked at it at all. So I have

(08:26):
my confession, and father says, Dick, I want you to
step in the bathroom, and I want you to take
as much time as you can give it to thank
the Lord for all the things he's done for you.
I said, okay, So.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
I go into the bathroom.

Speaker 4 (08:49):
I make it about three minutes and I'm sobbing like
a baby, and I remember coming back and I'm going, oh,
I mean, you're so fired up. Boy, I'm over here
now turned my heart over the Lord. I said, I'm sorry.
I've been on the outside looking in the window, knowing
what those good Christians are doing, but I won't go
in the door. I'm not going in there. You know,

(09:11):
I didn't know the goodness of the Lord for sure.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
At that point.

Speaker 4 (09:15):
I'd seen it in my wife, I'd seen in my
parents and other Christians. But I was this tough marine.
I was, you know, I just some screwed up thinking
I had. And so when that night, all of a sudden,
I just was pulled away from me and then I
could Ooh, but I didn't realize how much I had

(09:39):
to go through to turn my heart over the Lord.
And people say, you know, it's like process, she was
born again. That's one way to say it. But you know,
however you want to explain it that Lord, I'm sorry,
you're in charge. I've been trying to run this and
I'm just not. This isn't my job, job me to

(10:00):
follow you?

Speaker 1 (10:04):
And what a story, Dick Erickson, while sharing his heart
and his faith with all of us, and great job
as always to Joey for bringing us this story. Clearly
he had an encounter a bunch of the men did
in that chopper. But then he had a marriage encounter.
And this is where the rubber hits the road. I
didn't realize how much I had to go through to

(10:25):
turn my heart over to the Lord. This tough marine said, Lord,
I'm sorry, you're in charge. And while Christians know what
those words mean. By the way, you can catch the
rest of Dick's story in his book How the Rubber
Meets the Road, A blue collar Roadmap is success for
business owners and entrepreneurs. You can buy it at Amazon
dot com. Dick Erickson's story here on our American story