The 95-year-old has farmed, done custom work and run a trucking business. He's held seats on the Greenview School Board and the village board and helped organize the Greenview Community Bank. Dirks also was the official timekeeper for Greenview High School basketball games for 27 years.

However, a chance encounter more than 78 years ago - with a man who would become an American hero - stands out in Dirks' memory.

It happened the evening of Sept. 30, 1926, when Dirks was almost 17 and living on the family farm on what now is Fitschen Road south of Athens.

The teenager had just finished his chores and was headed into the house when he noticed a plane overhead.

"In those days, when you heard an airplane, you looked for it," Dirks said.

The plane's engine suddenly stopped running, Dirks said, and the aircraft went down in a clover field about 11/2 miles away.

John and his older brother, the late Herman Dirks, jumped in "the old Model T" and found the plane along the Irwin Bridge Road, just across the Sangamon County line. The pilot, who was not injured, turned out to be Charles Lindbergh.

The young aviator, a graduate of the Army's flight training school, was working for the Robertson Aircraft Corp., flying mail between St. Louis and Chicago, with stops in Springfield and Peoria.

Lindbergh asked if someone could take him and the mail to Springfield to "get it on its way," Dirks said. Herman obliged, and the two men later returned to the farmhouse, where Lindbergh spent the night in an upstairs bedroom.

The next morning, Lindbergh visited with the family during breakfast. Dirks found the pilot to be "very humble" and somewhat quiet.

"I remember one specific thing," Dirks said. "My mother asked him, 'Can you see us down here on the ground?' He said, 'Oh yes, I can see you every time I go over, waving with your handkerchief or whatever.'"

After the meal, Lindbergh went to fix his plane.

According to a dated entry in Lindbergh's log book, which Dirks has a photocopy of, the forced landing the previous day was "due to throttle controls coming apart."

Lindbergh worked on the plane's engine for a few minutes before announcing he thought it would run, Dirks said.

"It was quite a procedure to get that engine started with a prop," Dirks explained. "They didn't have self-starters in those days."

Lindbergh adjusted the controls in the cockpit, then walked to the front of the plane and gave the propeller a pull. After several such trips, Lind-

bergh asked Dirks to climb into the cockpit.

"I wasn't too keen about it, but I did get in," Dirks recalled.

The pilot showed the teen how to regulate the controls and told him he'd "set the throttle to one side, so it wouldn't run too fast."

"I thought that sounded real good," Dirks said.

It took a few trials, but the engine finally "made two or three coughs."

"About that time, I crawled out of there," Dirks remarked.

As the engine warmed up, Lindbergh asked the men who'd gathered if they had some containers, because he might have to dump some fuel. He advised everyone to stand away from the back of the plane and told the landowner that if there was any damage to the field, to be sure to get an estimate and report it.

Lindbergh sized up his field, Dirks said, and although he struggled a bit, he eventually was able to "wiggle that plane out of this mud hole."

"He got airborne, made a couple circles around and waved us goodbye," Dirks reminisced.

Merritt Fitschen, 85, lived down the road from the Dirks farm in 1926. Fitschen said he was "just a little squirt" when the incident happened, but he remembers the field that first day of October was soft and Lindbergh's plane "barely cleared the fence."

"Mud was falling off his wheels," said Fitschen, who still lives in his boyhood home.

Whenever Lindbergh flew over the area again on his airmail route, Dirks said, he'd tip his wing and wave.

A few months later, on May 20, 1927, Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field near New York City in the "Spirit of St. Louis." He landed the small monoplane in Paris the next day, winning a $25,000 prize offered by hotel owner Raymond Orteig.

Nicknamed "Lucky Lindy" and the "Lone Eagle," Lindbergh garnered international attention for making the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic. He received numerous awards, including the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

"That was really something, no question about it," Dirks said.

"It was a big deal," Fitschen agreed.

After his famous flight, Lindbergh helped further the development of aeronautics; flew about 50 combat missions as a civilian in World War II; served as an adviser to the Ford Motor Company, aviation industry and Air Force; and became interested in the conservation movement, among other things. He also wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about his trans-Atlantic adventure.

Lindbergh died of cancer in 1974 in Hawaii.

Dirks' daughter, Nancy Stier of Petersburg, said her family's connection to the legendary pilot is exciting.

The Kugler family - Bruce, Marjorie, Josh, Valerie, Rachel and Claire - who live in the house where Lindbergh once stayed, also are intrigued.

Josh Kugler, a freshman at Sacred Heart-Griffin High School, researched Lindbergh for a school report about "the effect he had on the 1920s."

"I think it's really cool that I'm sleeping in the same room that Charles Lindbergh slept in," Josh said.

Over the years, Dirks has read several books about the aviation pioneer, he's seen the "Spirit of St. Louis" at the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and he's visited Lindbergh's secluded burial site on Maui. He's also recounted his experience for students at Greenview Elementary School and for a piece written by the late Rowland Hall for the C.A.L./N-X-211 Collectors Society newsletter.

Charlie Nance considers Dirks a friend and a "swell individual." He and Athens Mayor Debbie Richardson hope local tourism groups will recognize Lindbergh's involuntary visit by erecting a marker at the site and noting it on brochures and maps.

Dirks, who still has the table Lindbergh ate breakfast at, says he feels fortunate to have met the flier.

"I was at the right place at the right time." Dirks said.

Ann Gorman can be reached through the Metro Desk at 788-1519.