Description:
Bronco Pilots follows a career Marine Corps pilot growing up in Oklahoma, college, naval flight school, combat and his career. He and two best friends bonded & became "The Triumvirate" during their Vietnam.
Brief description: John Pierson is a decorated US Marine Corps Pilot who flew helicopter MedEvac, resupply, insertions and recovery and Search and Rescue missions in 1965/66 and OV-10 Bronco Tactical Close Air Support missions in 1968/69 in the Vietnam War. He also served non-combat tours in California, Puerto Rico, North Carolina and Japan. While serving as the Aircraft Maintenance Officer of VMO-1 in North Carolina, his department set a Navy and Marine Corps aircraft availability record and he set a personal Aviation World Record for which he was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross.John began writing stories about his life at the suggestion of his first AA mentor who advised him to write about the trouble caused by his drinking days, and after sharing the story with his mentor, to wad them up and throw them away or burn them as a symbol of shedding the burden or forgiving others for their part and forgiving himself for his part and forgetting the associated fear, rejection, shame, etc. The suggestion worked and John stayed sober but he didn't throw away the stories. Recently, a few years ago, he began putting the stories in more or less chronological order for a book that he hopes will be fun to read and will help his readers to learn from his mistakes, as well as, his successes.
Review Quotes: "The memoir boom, which seemed to dominate the early 1990s, has slowed somewhat but remains a valued mirror on the times, events and traumas all of us have experienced. Many memoirs are clearly great reads but present a sugar-coated peek at the lives of the authors. Others are just wonderful exaggerations of nearly everything.
John "Goofy" Pierson's is a warts-and-all page turner taking us from Boy Scouting in rural Oklahoma to high school, college, and military football fields. The ebbs and flows of football were a major shaper of John's life. He went to the University of Oklahoma to play football, transferred to the University of New Mexico because of football and much of his early military career involved football. But this isn't a sports memoir because in college, he discovered a Marine Corps leadership program that took him from close-order drills to seats in the aircraft of war. And like many of us growing up in the 50s and 60s, romance, and, yes, sex was also prominent in John's life when at the top of the charts was "Love Letters in the Sand" and later, The Doors directing us to "Light My Fire!" And John lit some fires. So, buckle up. Get a good grip. You'll hold your breath as John's helicopter takes Viet Cong machine gun fire from the jungles of Vietnam to the time he found himself in the Juarez hoosgow wondering with booze-induced fear if he was going to get out of there alive. You'll find yourself becoming a member of the Brain Committee cheering for John, cautioning John and being so grateful that he survived to share this terrific story."
Dennis A. Britton
May - 2023
Dennis Britton is a retired journalist. He spent 25 years at The Los Angeles Times, where he was responsible for national, foreign, and business news. He was also editor-in-chief of both the Chicago Sun-Times and the Denver Post.