Discover the incredible journey of Marine helicopter pilot Dick Erickson. Before becoming the resilient man he is today, Dick faced a challenging path. From an angry student quick to trouble and a college dropout, to a young man doubted about making it in the Marine Corps, his early life was marked by adversity. But the Vietnam War called, and Dick chose to serve, taking to the skies in a helicopter over dangerous terrain, setting the stage for a truly life-changing event that would redefine his purpose.
It was during a perilous night mission high above the mountains of Vietnam that Dick and his fellow pilots encountered something extraordinary. Battling radio static and the ever-present dangers of war, a clear, unmistakable voice broke through, delivering a message that seemed to come from beyond this world. This profound spiritual experience became a pivotal “God wink” for Dick Erickson, a moment that didn’t just transform his own faith but helped shape the purposeful man he would become. Join Our American Stories as we explore this unforgettable tale of courage, conviction, and a divine encounter in the skies, perfect for Vietnam veterans and anyone seeking inspirational stories of personal growth.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
Speaker 1: 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 a helicopter pilot in Vietnam.
00:00:32
Speaker 2: Here’s Joey Dick.
00:00:34
Speaker 3: 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.
00:00:53
Speaker 4: I was fooling with one of my friends, and the principal 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 my principal, 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, 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.
00:01:54
Speaker 3: And in college, with the distraction of girls and booze, his grades suffered.
00:02:00
Speaker 4: I got noticed two weeks in him that quarter that I’m out of school for a year.
00:02:05
Speaker 2: That was for grades, and I can.
00:02:07
Speaker 4: Remember stand out in front of the big main hall with the.
00:02:10
Speaker 2: Guy gave me the news.
00:02:11
Speaker 4: Who was the head of our music department, Mr. Van Vlistens 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, “Erickson, you should have understood that when you’re out playing around.” Just before I went to 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.”
00:02:42
Speaker 2: The Marine Corps.
00:02:44
Speaker 4: 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.
00:03:06
Speaker 3: 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.
00:03:26
Speaker 4: 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 ’em up! Let’s go!” So we cranked up our helicopters.
00:03:51
Speaker 2: Two of us.
00:03:51
Speaker 4: Two helicopters went down there. We dropped him off, and then we said, “Well, we’ll take”—we took him the most expedient way.
00:03:59
Speaker 2: It was over the mountain.
00:04:00
Speaker 4: 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.
00:04:15
Speaker 2: Of the helicopter come up.
00:04:17
Speaker 4: 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 it’d be something like we’d always use Syr Papa Base.
00:04:42
Speaker 2: Which would be our base. “This is Syr Papa One Five” would be our call sign.
00:04:49
Speaker 4: And so we were going back and forth like this, trying to connect with our base, and the static was so bad. Finally, it 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, didn’t hear the engines running.
00:05:19
Speaker 2: Absolutely, silence.
00:05:22
Speaker 4: 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?”
00:05:37
Speaker 2: It was so…
00:05:40
Speaker 4: 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 to get Clarence to land at the base.
00:06:04
Speaker 2: Got on it. Everyone jumps out of the aircraft. “Did you hear that? Did you?”
00:06:10
Speaker 4: 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?
00:06:33
Speaker 2: No.
00:06:35
Speaker 4: 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.
00:06:48
Speaker 3: Through, which didn’t fully sink in until after coming back from Vietnam and marrying his wife, Diane.
00:06:58
Speaker 2: We went on a marriage account.
00:07:00
Speaker 4: 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.
00:07:09
Speaker 2: That had probably been a new Catholic about a year. Diane had been after me.
00:07:13
Speaker 4: 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, 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, 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 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.
00:08:46
Speaker 2: I go into the bathroom.
00:08:49
Speaker 4: 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, I didn’t know the goodness of the Lord for sure.
00:09:15
Speaker 2: At that point.
00:09:15
Speaker 4: 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 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 follow you?”
00:10:04
Speaker 1: 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 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.com. Dick Erickson’s story here on Our American Stories.
Discover more real American voices.
