This was a fun project, one of a few planned.
My Father Ernest Anders Erickson is seen here in 1938 standing in front of his Grandparents Anders and Brita Kristina 'Christine' (Olofsdotter-Olsson) Erickson's Farmland in Regan, Burleigh County, North Dakota. Both his Grandparents, the Erickson's and the Nelsons ran farms soon after emigrating from Sweden in 1903.

My dad is sixteen years old at the time here and not far from where he was born in Painted Woods. It was the influences of growing up on the Great Northern Plains and with the arrival of the Barnstormer pilots setting down with their prop airplanes on nearby flatlands and of course seeing the newsreels of Charles Lindbergh's historic flight from New York City to Paris that his dreams of being an Aviator began.

This image shows the vastness of North Dakota and where he grew up. The big skies and the horizons that go on forever. Four years later he would join the Army Air Corps and within eighteen months he would be flying dangerous missions over Nazi occupied Europe with the 95th Bomb Group as a B-17 pilot. He would accomplish 35 missions before his return home. His dreams came true and set him on a life of being involved in the 'Air Business' as he called it.