When God Saved a Pilot

By Rodger Findiesen

When God Saved a Pilot is the story of Gods calling the author into action on numerous occasions. One of those was headline news and is included, but others preceded and followed to show how the authors faith was increased over time by doing Gods will and not his own which God often had to correct.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781512751604

Rodger Findiesen

The author is a retired Air Force instructor pilot and was a commercial airline pilot for Continental, Air Cal and American Airlines. After becoming a Christian he led adult Bible studies for over twenty years, been on numerous mission trips, been a Lay Leader at a large Methodist church and became a Certified Lay Minister. He was the Baltimore Washington Conference Man of the year in 2011. In 2004 as Captain for American he asked the Christian passenger to please raise their hands.

Book preview

Chapter 1

TR6

My Triumph TR6 convertible screamed around the curves of the Ortega Highway. There were broad freeways to get home to my twenty-seven-foot Catalina sailboat that I lived on in Dana Point, but driving on the mountainous, twisting two-lane highway with the car’s top down was far more fun. I had returned from another US Air Force flight at Norton Air Force Base in Southern California, and now I was headed back to my other love—sailing.

The car lived for this road, and I often came home this way in good weather and daylight. I passed cars and trucks with abandon. Up ahead there was a line of cars following some kind of large gravel truck. I slowed until the straightaway came, and then I gunned it and passed about six cars. But the truck was a double-trailer gravel truck, which I had never encountered before. While I was passing and about midway past the gravel truck, a two-ton pickup appeared at the top of the hill ahead, speeding directly at me.

I knew I was about to die. I thanked God for my wonderful life so far, although it was rather short at twenty-three. I did not know God, but I thanked him anyway. The gravel truck was too long for me to brake and duck behind or else to speed past. If I went for the left shoulder, I would probably meet the pickup there. So I hugged the gravel truck and waited.

The pickup sliced through the TR’s front left fender. The speed was so great that I did not even feel the impact. The truck dwarfed my vision. Then it was over. I slowed and pulled over to the shoulder in the shade of the pin oaks. I was astounded I had survived without even a scratch.

The pickup driver backed up to me, and after seeing I was fine, he helped me unbend what was left of the fender so I could drive home.

Even by that time I had lost count of how many close calls there had been—and, like the gravel trailer truck, how many unexpected encounters.

This is a story of encounters that have saved my life and transformed me.

Chapter 2

Ashamed

I had walked into Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC, many times before. After all, I was an airline captain. But never before could I remember being nervous. I knew my career was in jeopardy—as I had known it would be when, a few days earlier, from the flight deck of a full Boeing 767, I got on the public address system and asked all the passengers who were Christians to raise their hands.

As I walked, I wondered what the questioners would ask and even how I would respond. But if I told them the truth about what prompted me to make that public announcement, how could they deem me sane enough to ever captain a plane again?

The woman from the staff who met me was friendly and cordial, but she was a bit distant also. She escorted me through the lower level of the airport so as not to attract any media attention. At least I had complied with their wishes and had not contacted the media. That was not easy. Two TV networks had come to my front door, and phone messages came from the national and even international media with promises of fair interviews. I really wanted to tell my side of the story, as speculation was rampant. But then my story was told and the temptation subsided.

There was just one question posed to me in DC that I struggled with. Did God tell me to make the public announcement (PA) on the plane, as some reports claimed I had done? It had taken a while to get to where I was at that point in my career: the years of interviewing; being on strike at Continental; starting over again at Air Cal; and then the merger with American. If I lost my job, I would lose everything very quickly. So that question was asked more than once, and I denied it more than once. If they thought I was crazy, my career would be over.

I went home ashamed and waited.

Chapter 3

Becoming a Pilot

Rodger is a great name for a pilot, especially if you knew your baby would become one someday. In pilot lingo used over the radio, saying Roger means that you have understood the radio message just received. Back when radio transmissions were hard to understand because of radio quality and noise, such one-word terminology avoided repeating transmissions. Today pilots must repeat directions and instrument readings from the tower and the air traffic controllers, such as altitude, heading, or airspeed changes for traffic separation. My mother used the D spelling for Rodger, as she thought of the possible nickname of Rod. I was never called Rod, but now it is reminiscent of the Twenty-Third Psalm. I have certainly been prodded a few times, and it is comforting to know God cares even when I go astray. Generaly I am Rodger, Rodg, or for a short time in the Air Force, Fingers.

I did not intend as a young man to become a pilot either in the military or, later, in the commercial airlines. My lifelong affiliation with aviation began when an unwed woman conceived me as a result of an encounter with an Army Air Corps navigator, probably one hot summer day in 1948, a few years after World War II. I was born in April 1949, and he did not marry her. There is a certain irony in an aviator not taking responsibility for his actions. I am very grateful to have been born at all, considering her circumstances. Later she reluctantly took me to an adoption agency. When I was adopted six months later, my new mother changed my name from Alex Hoss to Rodger Findiesen—a first name fit for an aviator and a last name fit to be mispronounced and forgotten. Later in my life, a certain flight attendant would announce, Our captain is Rodger Finkelstein …, and my wife, who happened to be on the plane, would correct the flight attendant.

My adopting mother, who I will just refer to as my mother, would tell me as a small child how cute a baby I was with my blue eyes and blond hair. I had smiled at her from the crib in the adoption agency. When the nurse picked me up, I then smiled at my father over the nurse’s shoulder. They brought me home because Mom was sure God had chosen me to be her baby—and Dad was charmed too. They told me this because I was adopted; all babies smile, of course.

As much as I was told how special I was, I always wondered why I was adopted. Why was I different from my friends? It makes one think about life a little sooner than usual. Is life random, or is there some meaning, a plan? Will I be abandoned again? Why me? Not until my wife’s third pregnancy could I know in part that my adoption served a divine purpose. Having been adopted made me grateful for my life and a little humble for knowing how fragile life is.

My dad built his own home with the help of my mother while he worked nights for General Motors as a machinist. After receiving an inheritance from his own father, my dad bought a hardware store. Later, he opened a gift shop next to it that my mom managed. Before computer inventories, owning a store was a tough and time-consuming way to not make money, so Dad sold these businesses. He bought an abandoned farm that he developed into twenty-one custom homes, building one or two at a time. This allowed him to buy and build other properties, including two-plus acres on Shadow Lake in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. There he built a large home for us that included an indoor pool. We were there through my high school years and for my first two years of college.

I spent many hours sailing the small lake on a Sunfish, even capsizing on Thanksgiving Day once when the lake would have been frozen had it not been for the strong breeze. Dad had to row out and rescue me. I got pneumonia. I just about drowned a few years ago when I capsized another Sunfish that I own now. I swam the wrong way under the sail in ever deeper, murky water, and not realizing my error, I quickly began running out of breath. I was drowning when, from behind me, I heard a voice say, Turn around! You’re going the wrong way. I emerged from the sail and gasped for air. It was not the first time God has kept me from going in the wrong direction.

My adopted sister, who is two years younger than me, fought with me regularly when we were young children. We both enjoyed swimming in Shadow Lake, where our dad had been a lifeguard when he was young.

I was somewhat tall and lanky. Although I tried out for soccer in high school, I was not athletic enough. However, I did enjoy playing football with my neighborhood friends, and I had a fair passing arm.

I had some adventures as a kid. When I was about eight, I chopped down an eighty-foot tree in the neighboring backyard of a friend to make room for a fort. As my friend’s dad complained to my father, I felt my dad was rather proud of my perseverance with the tiny hatchet. Later I had my sister play dead to see if one of the chicken hawks circling overhead would come down to eat her—so we could catch the bird. She peeked and saw the hawks circling high above, screamed, and ran! Rats!

In those day’s kids watched westerns on TV. In many of them, the hero would triumph over the bad guy. I have a photo of my sister and me watching while riding our plastic horses, bouncing up and down, as we shot at the TV in the chase scenes. My mom tried to get my sister into dolls, and one was almost as tall as she was. She hanged it by the neck from her canopy bed, and we shot it just to be sure. Needless to say, Mom stopped buying dolls.

I think it was about fifth grade when I sat in the bleachers in the gym with a friend and the kid behind us kept kicking my friend. The kid was a jock and a bully. I told him to stop and pick on someone his own size. Later, we met in the playing field, where he was waiting to start baseball practice. It was clear I was going to get a beating. So I got in the first punch, hitting him on the jaw, and he went down. As he got up, the coach came over and saved me. Thanks, Marshal. The bullying stopped.

At fourteen, I nearly burned down a forested swamp with fireworks and a gasoline-soaked model boat. By fifteen, I had evaded the local police hiding in a tree fort as they scoured the neighborhood looking for the blond kid who had raced past their patrol car driving a go-cart. I suppose I was a normal boy. I was spoiled.

Many pilots seem to have it in their genes to be aviators, but that is not my case. It just happened. My father had wanted to fly from the time he was a young man in the era of barnstormers. He worked for one a short time and got a ride in a biplane. Later my father built gliders with his friends. They would get into these sailplanes and be pulled into the air by trucks on fields or frozen lakes. When World War II came, Dad was refused a pilot slot due to color blindness. Later he would lose his hearing, which was due in part to working in the machine shop for General Motors during the war. Because I am adopted, I