September 4, 2025 — Some people spend a lifetime seeking fame or fortune, but Tim Dickerson has spent his life building a reputation on something far more valuable: trust. As a pilot, a craftsman, and a man who has dedicated over 50 years to the sky, he embodies a quiet, unwavering confidence born not of ego, but of humility and a deep respect for the unforgiving nature of flight. This is the story of a man who understands that true skill isn’t about taking risks, but about meticulously avoiding them.
To understand Tim, you first have to understand his philosophy on flight. He’s a man who has flown for 50 years without a single accident or violation, a feat so rare it earned him the prestigious Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award. He’s the kind of pilot who will wait four hours on the ground for the wind to die down, while others are up there getting the “you know what beat out of them.” He simply doesn’t gamble with his life or anyone else’s. “I’m not a gambler,” he says, with a conviction that only a man who has faced three in-flight engine failures can possess. When the Colonel interviewing him for Army helicopter flight school (which he was selected in 1980) asked him why they should spend a third of a million dollars on him, his answer was simple: “Because I don’t gamble.” Tim became an Army helicopter pilot and Warrant Officer a year later.
To Tim Dickerson, a pilot’s greatest asset isn’t a state-of-the-art engine or a perfectly-tuned airframe. It’s the person sitting in the other seat. He believes a co-pilot’s role is not just to assist, but to be an essential partner in survival. For him, this person is Sharon, his wife of 40 years.
He explains the immense trust that builds between pilots, forged in moments of crisis. He recalls one harrowing incident where his airplane’s engine failed, forcing him to glide toward a naval base. While he was focused on landing, Sharon, his co-pilot, took command of the radios and charts, navigating and declaring their emergency. She was the one who heard the Lemoore Navy Tower’s warning not to get tripped up on the arresting gear (a cable that stretches across the runway that jets catch their tail hook on while practicing deck landings), a crucial piece of information that helped them land safely. If they hit that arresting gear they would have flipped over after an 8-mile emergency glide to the runway. In that moment, she was his eyes and his voice, the reason they landed safely.
“Without them, we’d all be dead,” he says, a sentiment he’s applied to his co-pilots over the years, including Sharon. He’s had three engine failures in his flying career, and in each case, the presence of a calm, competent person in the other seat was the difference between a close call and a tragedy. To him, the co-pilot is the unsung hero of every flight. He often brings up the story of Sully Sullenberger’s co-pilot, Jeff Skiles, who he believes never got the credit he deserved for the “Miracle on the Hudson.” It’s a parallel he draws to his own life, a reminder that success in the sky is a team effort.
This unwavering caution is rooted in his deeply personal experiences. He’s seen the mountains of California littered with the wreckage of aircraft whose pilots thought they could push their luck. He knows the difference between a puffy white cloud and a dangerous lenticular cloud that can rip a plane to pieces with 70-mph winds. He knows that in the face of nature’s power, arrogance is a death sentence.
The Soul of a Craftsman
Tim’s story is as much about building as it is about flying. His hands, calloused and skilled, have brought three airplanes to life from blueprints. This isn’t a hobby; it’s an obsession with perfection. He has turned down countless offers for his planes, not because of the money, but because he doesn’t trust the buyers. He sees himself as the manufacturer, and if a plane he built were to crash, the blame would fall on him. He can’t sell a piece of his soul to someone who lacks “a healthy amount of respect” for the machine and the sky.
This dedication to craftsmanship goes all the way back to his childhood, where his grandfather taught him that “everything has to have curves” and his high school plastics and jewelry teacher at Clovis High School, Mr. Nikaido, taught him how to create perfectly smooth plastic edges. These are the details that matter, the things that make the difference between a good plane and a great one. He even jokes about his first home-built airplane, which was so much a part of his life that when he and his wife, Sharon, didn’t have a Christmas tree, they simply used the tail of the plane, decorating it with lights.
A Life of Unlikely Encounters
Tim’s life is a master class in being in the right place at the right time. He tells you about a time he was talking trash with Chuck Yeager , the first man to break the sound barrier, at a fly-in. He met John Travolta, another fellow pilot, and didn’t even recognize him at first. He’s seen celebrities from Clint Eastwood and Paul Newman to William Shatner and Anjelica Huston, all of whom, at one point or another, have sought refuge in the quiet beauty of the Central Valley.
These stories aren’t told to impress; they’re simply the backdrop to a life lived without regret. For Tim, these interactions with the famous are no different than sharing a beer with a buddy in the hangar. It’s all just people talking shop, whether that shop is flying, acting, or simply loving the state of California. Because at the end of the day, Tim Dickerson is a living testament to the fact that you can be “Clovis to the bones” and still live a life as vast and exciting as the California sky itself.