Profile: Sunshine Dickson

By Sunshine Dickson

Sunshine Dickson started her aviation career with a gamble on herself and what the military had to offer her. Being from a rural area (the township signs had a double-digit population - if any at all), she knew she wanted to travel the world and be something more than what was “expected” or be something unheard of for a girl from Northwest Arkansas. She had a love for airplanes and had her eye on the Air Force since middle school. No one had ever told her that this was something she could do and many tried to dissuade her. In the 9th grade, she took the military aptitude test and started receiving calls from all the military branches to join them. This solidified her resolve that she did have choices and now her problem wasn’t a limited number of careers to choose from, it was which one to choose. She told the recruiters she wanted to travel, go to college and work around aircraft. The Air Force seemed like the logical choice, she wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps – but he did not agree – he felt it was not a place for his girl. Her best friends thought she was crazy for not going straight to college with them in Finance, Art, or Business. She was driven by a belief in herself and by gaining courage from her grandmother, a mentor and prior Army Nurse, she took a leap of faith and started her career in Aviation at 17 years old, in the Air Force active duty. She was stationed in California and her dream came true to work (not only around) but on aircraft – the Air Force had chosen the Galaxy (C-5A, B, & C) aircraft as her first assignment. As a Communications, Navigation, Radar, and Doppler systems technician, she was anxious and excited as a whole new world had just opened up to her. The C-5 Galaxy tail stands five stories tall whereas she stood a little over five feet tall. The tires alone were almost as tall as her, this thing was giant and impressive. What had she gotten herself into, she thought. She was right, she could do this… and more.

Fast forward 29 years, Sunshine has traveled all over the world and worked on 12 different aircraft types within the Boeing, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, and Douglas manufacturers’ fleet. She has resided on both American coasts and many places in between and traveled to many countries. She became a civilian aircraft maintainer as an avionics technician, as a flight line mechanic to launch and recover aircraft, and as an engine-run specialist who was selected to train others in ground engine run tasks for the DC-10 & KC-10 aircraft. During that time Sunshine received her Federal Aviation Administration certification as an airframe certified mechanic. As an FAA-certified mechanic and college graduate, Sunshine found herself taking a different career path within her field, as a college instructor and supervisor of a collegiate program focused on aviation technology – teaching others to become what she has become. As an instructor in a program with low enrollment, she noticed that it was still a male-dominated field and that most youth (both genders) were not seeing this as a viable career. When asked about her experience in the academic setting (in 2018-2019) interacting with high schoolers, Sunshine said, “There were many career fairs, where the kids were incorrectly assuming that this (Aviation) is not something they could do and they did not even realize this kind of job skill and training exists. They would look at me in disbelief when I explained it is a career I have held since I was 17. Which led me to know two things: first, kids are not being shown jobs like this as a good career move and second, the majority of girls are still not being encouraged to seek out ‘non-traditional’ careers.”

Today Sunshine is in Aviation Management and has an exciting career with Citadel Completions (www. citadelcompletions. com)– a VIP/VVIP Aircraft Completions Center. She gets the opportunities to meet head of state leaders, Presidents, and movie stars when these owners’ airliners are in Citadel’s facilities getting their interiors refurbished, or maintenance packages completed. With so many different avenues you can take with an aviation career, this one has been the most fun, she says. As a testimony to aviation as a vocation, Sunshine stated, “I am blessed to be where I am and to have gone where I’ve been.

Life is amazing and I still love airplanes, 29 years later! That will never change.