Jeff Hauser retires after second distinguished career

Jan. 10—Jeff Hauser, the Terre Haute Regional Airport's outgoing director, originally didn't have much interest in the job.

"I didn't put in for the position," he recalled in an interview Wednesday afternoon at an open house at the airport commemorating his retirement. "Someone called me and asked if I would be interested, and I said, 'I really don't think so.'"

He added, "Ultimately, I did, and I told them, 'I don't know anything about running an airport. I know about flying airplanes, and I know about leading people.'

"And they said, 'That's what we need — leading people.' There were so many good people here [when I arrived], all you had to do was focus in one direction. And it worked out great. It was so easy."

Speaking to guests at the open house, Hauser self-deprecatingly added the team in place when he joined the airport knew so much that "I didn't have to learn anything the entire nine years."

When he began his job in January of 2015, Hauser had told the airport board that he would serve as director for five years. He spent far more time than that on the runway.

His last official day at the airport was Nov. 1, when Craig Maschino, an Air Guard lieutenant colonel and intelligence officer, took over the job. Hauser has served as a consultant since then, and Feb. 1 will be his last official day.

Kip Clark, a retired two-star general who was a fighter pilot alongside Hauser, said, "This community is blessed to have had him. He's been part of a lot of growth in the Indiana Air National Guard and the aviation community here in the area."

Airport Board President Rick Burger told those assembled, "Be proud of what Jeff's left us to work with." He presented Hauser with a taxi way light mounted on a pedestal as a farewell gift.

Under Hauser's watch, Terre Haute Regional was named Indiana's Airport of the Year 2017.

"What they look at for Airport of the Year is community involvement — how much you work with economic development, the Chamber (of Commerce), the mayor's office, the county commissioners," he said. "How much you do a lot with education — what you do with kids. They look at a lot of different topics when they select Airport of the Year, and it just so happens that year our numbers in aviation aircraft really went up so a lot of things came together all at once. It worked out well."

Also working in the airport's favor is that it offers a wealth of aircraft flight instruction, from Hoosier Aviation and Indiana State University, which moved its flight academy there in 2013.

One of Hauser's last hoorahs will be the Terre Haute Air Show on June 1 and 2, though he takes pains to refrain from taking credit for landing the event.

"The joke on it was, I said, 'If we ever have another air show, I'll announce my retirement' — they announced it right afterwards, which was just a coincidence," he said. "The air show's so good for the community."

The last local air show was in 2018, and almost 50,000 attended despite historic rains that came the Friday before and created a parking nightmare.

"We had a lot of secondary and tertiary parking, but they washed out with the rain," Hauser recalled. A company has been hired to take care of parking for the June event.

Hauser enjoyed a 38-year military career, which began in April 1980 when he enlisted in the Indiana Air National Guard in Terre Haute and clocked more than 2,000 hours of flying time. He retired as a brigadier general and assistant adjutant general for air, Indiana National Guard.

"What stands out the most [about my career] is I actually was military for 38 years, and then I came [to the airport] — it's like I actually never left, I'm right across the ramp from where I worked since I was 18 years old," he said.

Hauser, an Indianapolis native, concluded, "I didn't know where Terre Haute really was, and I ended up enlisting in the military and spent most of my career within this little square of the airport."

David Kronke can be reached at 812-231-4232 or at david.kronke@tribstar.com.