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At the June 3rd Meeting Steve Whisenhunt read this Memorial Day tribute to Past President and District Governor Loy Dickenson.
U-Hills Rotary Member Loy Dickinson.
By Steve Whisenhunt
Loy was our President in 1986-1987, and District Governor from our Club in 1993-1994.
Loy was born in Oakland, moving in the Great Depression to Berkeley. Loy attended elementary, junior high, Berkeley High School, and Cal, coincidentally the same exact schools I attended some 20+ year later. Because of that, I think Loy and I bonded. In 1943, Loy was a 2nd Lieutenant with the Army Air Corps, serving as a bombardier on a B-17 Flying Fortress.
In August 1944, seven B-17 Bombers left an Italian airfield to bomb a military site in Germany. Their route took them over Czechoslovakia where they were ambushed by a swarm of German fighters. None returned. They were all shot down over Czechoslovakia.
Loy managed to bail out, parachuting into a Czech farmer’s pasture.
The farmer and his family took Loy in, and hid Loy for about a month. The German high command in the local town put out the word that anyone harboring allied military would result in all family members being executed in the town square. Learning of this, Loy asked the farmer’s wife if she would clean his uniform, he polished his boots, and he walked into town and surrendered. Loy was a POW for over 10 months, until the war ended in 1945.
The farmer that hid Loy hosted him in his many visits back to the town. The farmer had several kids 5 to 10 years younger than Loy who continued in this tradition. Loy would tell me that he was treated as a Rock Star by the citizens of the town when he came back to visit. The town rolled out the red carpet when he returned.
I often asked Loy about his experience as a POW. He really didn’t want to talk much about it. He did say that he wasn’t tortured. Then one day while sitting next to me at a Rotary meeting, he broke his silence and said that he would never ever complain about being a POW. That very few of the airmen on those seven B-17’s survived. They either couldn’t bail out in time, or did so and were shot on the ground. He felt lucky to have been a POW, and when he went back to visit, he felt he owed his life to that Czech farmer and his family.
Loy was a leader, a great American, and truly exemplified “Service about Self”. Loy Dickinson passed away here in 2018 at the age of 97.