After he was drafted in 1968, Richard Dillon, then 20, went through Army basic training in Louisiana. Not long after, he was flying Huey helicopters in Vietnam.

Dillon, who retired as a colonel in the U.S. Army and as a captain with the Erie County Sheriff’s Office, is the keynote speaker at Alden High School’s Veterans Day Assembly on Tuesday, Nov. 10, at 1:40 p.m. in the Wilson Conrad Memorial Auditorium. WACS reporter Ava Przykuta interviewed him ahead of the assembly.

Basic training came in the summer, in what he called “hot, humid, miserable weather.” When he looked into his options for service, the Army offered him a spot in its warrant officer flight program. “Once you complete that, you become a helicopter pilot, so I chose that,” he said. He trained at Fort Walters, Texas, starting with a month of ground school before he learned to fly.

In Vietnam, Dillon was assigned to an aviation company in I Corps, the northern part of the country, and flew missions supporting units on the ground. His crew and their helicopter went by the call sign Black Mariah.

Dillon lives in Lancaster, but two of his grandchildren go to school in Alden, and he has spoken to their classes before. “I enjoy talking to the kids,” he said.