Interview with Olof Eriksen | Sound Authors Radio
October 31, 2008
Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. Today is June 6, 2008 and we’re talking all about books. My next guest is the author of Memoirs of an Immigrant. It’s a hard cover book. His name is Olof A. Ericksen. Welcome to the show.
Olof Ericksen: Thank you very much; it’s nice to be here.
Dr. Kent: Tell me a little bit about your book Memoirs of an Immigrant.
Olof Ericksen: Well, this book is about my life going all the way back to 1740 and there’s a reason for its going back there because of trouble with my mom and dad when they had a very ugly divorce and had you read part of my book you will find out that my dad is a bastard. And in order to prove that wrong I researched my dad all the way back to the Norwegian mountains in 1740. At that time I’m asking my mom well, where’s that bastard part? That’s the reason why I’m going back that far. Apparently of course I was born in Norway in 1936 and the book is just about from then until now.
Dr. Kent: What happened to you around the world war and all of that? What did it look like to you?
Olof Ericksen: I was terribly hurt in 1942 during the war but what really bashed my life up where it became a total mystery was that with the heavy bombing in Bergen, Norway at the time and we were evacuated to Oslo and meanwhile my mother had gotten special permission from Gestapo to go free with my little baby brother. When we came back three months later from Oslo to Bergen my dad was standing there on the platform and no mom. Of course I wanted her to forget that I asked him, “where’s mommy?” Mommies gone.
In fact, my mother abandoned me in 1944. My dad was an alcoholic and when the war was over I was what you call unspeakably poor. The Norwegian government paid for school or whoever did it, I do not know but one day two people came to the house where we lived and before you know it we were forced away from my drunken father and we were forced into a boy’s home and that’s where I grew up. 7-1/2 years in Norway and it was very unpleasant, very brutal what they did to me and it goes on and on from there.
Dr. Kent: Now you grew up in that home; how did you end up here?
Olof Ericksen: My mom came to Norway in 1952 and invited me and my little brother Erik. I was in college at the time; my little brother was still in the boy’s home and that poor boy went into the fire when he went to Sweden. It was terrible for him in Sweden because my dad was a drunkard and her new husband, my stepfather, was a drunkard also and was extremely unpleasant. Anyway, a beautiful thing happened to me when my brother who was in the American army in Frankfurt Germany was allowed in Christmas 1944 to come to Sweden and one of my Christmas presents was the invitation to come to this country.
Well, here I am. In 1956 I immigrated to the United States. It was tough, extremely tough. I could not speak English, I had no money, I had a trade as an engineer from Sweden that was given back to me by the United States government in 1960 just about. When I was drafted into the American army they saw the papers I had in Norway and Sweden and said, “Mr. Ericksen, you are in fact by our standards and our schooling an engineer.” So they bestowed me that degree in the United States.
I was lucky, very fortunate to hold some nice, responsible jobs but I felt that I was always short changed in what I was doing. I ventured out on my own in 1973. Yeah I struggled but I was lucky and yes today I own a worldwide company and I’m comfortable thanks to this country. I assume you saw my book.
Dr. Kent: One of the great impetuses for you to write this book was not just to tell your own story but to show people that pretty much people can overcome any kind of odds. Tell us a little bit about what is your message to people that are poor and abused and left behind?
Olof Ericksen: Well let me say this. Some of the professional reviewers out there, you probably know who they are, many of them anyway like Mr. Sam Hutchinson. He is in fact saying this book is about hope, that you can make anything of yourself if you give it a whack. That’s a gratifying thing now; beautiful words are coming from everywhere and like he said overcoming an obstacle is perhaps the theme of the book. And that’s what he says.
Yesterday somebody logged in on the Barnes & Noble and quite honestly I can’t recite it because it was beautiful. So I recognize, yes I did my thing. Where I came from you have to read what happened to me in the boys home, all of the brutality, and in fact I made it, and of course I made it because of this country. The opportunities are here and if you take advantage of it, be fair and square and work and learn, you’ll make it. In my opinion, there’s no reason for anyone in this country to walk around with their hands out. I’m sorry, I do not agree with that.
Dr. Kent: How about in this economic situation right now, it’s interesting, it’s certainly nothing like the situation you were in where you lost both parents and you’re in this horrible situation and you fought your way out. In the economy right now there’s a lot of people losing their homes, there’s people that can’t drive to work because of the gas prices. What do you think is in store for us here in this country?
Olof Ericksen: I don’t quite understand. Let me ask you a question. I assume you saw my book.
Dr. Kent: Yes.
Olof Ericksen: I drive a Rolls Royce. You must understand what this car stands for in my opinion. I’m not driving the Rolls Royce to flaunt it, to show off; it’s not that. If you read my book you will see right after World War II you see this car in 1950 on the highway in Norway. I just never forgot that sight and I realized if you want something like this, you just have to earn it. In this country, it’s a beautiful country to do anything you want.
Like I said in my paper to you, in my opinion, because I see the kids today and I try to help the kids around. I’m a certified teacher for machining tool and die making at my company and I taught a lot of people how to become something. But people dropping out of school is not going to help and walking around crying about what’s bad is not going to help because the opportunities are there.
Dr. Kent: How did all of that come about for you? I know you found the United States and you found your success, but back at the very beginning you read Robinson Crusoe and that’s of course a favorite book of many of ours, mine as well. The way that he could build things out of nothing; how did that encourage you?
Olof Ericksen: You have to go back a step or two. Take me 10, 11, 12 years old and the brutality of the boy’s home. You try to hide away from it but you can’t. So I was lucky. One day I found a book, its name was Robinson Crusoe. And I read it and I said, “Ay-ay-ay, if I could only get out of the boys home, get on a ship some place and let it sail away and jump overboard when it comes to anywhere to get away from the boys home.”
That was the thing that I wanted but if you go beyond that I also read the book The Count of Monte Cristo. If you can live with it and understand what I’ve done what happened to me, when you are in dire need that I was in as a boy you cannot but help dreaming. Reading a book like this, and that’s where there’s nothing there to put your hand on until Christmas when my brother invited me to this country. That’s why I’m a realist, what will be will be; providence. That’s when in effect, if you read the book The Count of Monte Cristo, he was in a dungeon for 14 years. I was in a dungeon too for 7-1/2 years; in the boy’s home.
My brother handed me a map to the treasure; a map to the island of America. Some place in America there is a treasure to be found. I found it by having the skills, my engineering degree from Europe. And there’s one thing if you look into my book when I graduated engineering I did not go into engineering. I wanted to learn what engineering was all about and became a tool and die maker if you read my book. So I learned my skill so that when I started my company I was very fortunate. I worked with jet engines and in flying hardware up above and the critical nature of these things.
I was terribly fortunate to meet this buyer, his name was Jim Albright. He was a rear gunner in World War II and flew over my head. I saw him up there fighting the Germans and everything else. I don’t know his name but after the war I found him by chance. I think you read about that. Okay? So there’s lots of luck also but I found a treasure in means of working and doing the work for this company called the ### Company, then buying a division of theirs. You saw how they stole it away from me and how I fought them back and I lost everything.
And how on an Easter day, true story, we went to dinner, my wife and my boy, and here in these plastic bags of garbage is the plans of a company that shut down and this is what I need. There is everything there. If you understand a machine shop there’s all the drawings, customer names, everything is right in front of me. The treasure of the world is right there in these plastic bags in forms of written documents and catalogs telling me what I have to do to recover. And that’s what I did. If you read my book I signed someplace there towards the end that due to what people did to me I am not afraid to having brought them out because there is no lies, there is only fact there.
It’s all the truth. I am saying that for as long as my company and this company exists they shall forever pay me back and they admitted in the courtroom that they stole $14 million from me. I got it back. Its an unbelievable story, a lot of people are reading it now and the reviewers professional and otherwise, the readers, that’s coming in now is awesome. There’s five star reviews, you can look it up on Barnes & Noble. Anybody who reads this and sees this book; Memoirs of an Immigrant can see this for themselves.
Dr. Kent: It’s been a real pleasure speaking with Olof Ericksen, author of Memoirs of an Immigrant. It is clearly a book that we all have to pick up and read about overcoming suffering, overcoming all odds. It’s been a real honor and I wish you the best success.
Olof Ericksen: It is very kind of you sir, thank you very much.
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