Dick Dillon, R.I.P.: Remembering Sky Rover, veteran Denver radio eye in the sky

Sad news: Dick Dillon — a.k.a. Sky Rover, one of the signature radio helicopter pilots in local broadcasting — passed away yesterday. He was in his late seventies. He worked at many stations in the area between 1972 and 1997, including KIMN during its glory days and KYGO, and influenced a generation of talent, including Nia Bender, who remembers him fondly.

“He is a huge part of Denver broadcasting history,” Bender writes via Facebook message. “A good portion of the stations he worked at were great stations at one time. As far as a human being goes… he was the tops. He never had the ‘ego’ that a lot of the people in the radio world seem to develop.”

Bender first worked with Dillon as a young traffic reporter, and she notes that “he was so incredibly good to me and everybody else for that matter! Oh… He was a great pilot, too!”

Indeed, Dillon covered the Big Thompson Flood of 1976, the Christmas Eve blizzard of 1982 and plenty of other noteworthy happenings over his 24 year career, as detailed at DenverRadio.net.

Keep flying, Sky Rover.

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