Colonel hired as borough’s new second-in-command

PALMER — In 41 years wearing a uniform, George Hays has been all over — Germany, Washington, Virginia, Japan, Alabama, Colorado, Iraq, Korea, Mississippi and Florida.

So why did he spend years trying to convince the Air Force to send him to Alaska?

Family.

“I had a daughter who moved up here in 1996. She married a Wasilla man,” Hays said. “They decided to move up here, and that was five children ago.”

Then another daughter moved up and added two more grandkids to the Hays family.

Finally in 2009 he managed to join them. Three years later, Hays retired as a colonel at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in July. He was director of command, control, communications and computer systems. But now, with a week under his belt, he’s the deputy manager of the Mat-Su Borough.

“We have seven grandchildren here in the Valley and two daughters and so we have decided to make this our home,” he said.

So how does his experience in the military prepare him to take on the role of deputy manager?

Quite well, actually.

Hays said that during his interview with borough manager John Moosey they got to talking about the different departments Moosey oversees.

Hays said that when he was in Japan he worked as deputy commander for base management. He oversaw a police department and a fire department. There was a department that oversaw the golf course, bowling alley and recreation facilities — kind of like a parks and recreation department. There was an IT department.

Except for the police department, the borough has all of those things as well.

“We had pert-near all the aspects. The only thing we didn’t have was economic development,” Hays said.

The closest thing, he said, were the military construction contractors.

“It gave me a good background for this job,” Hays said.

Hays hails from Elgin, Ore., and military service runs deep in his family.

“My father and all of his brothers and my mother’s brothers were all in World War II,” he said. “All three of my brothers were in the military, but none of them until I came along had made a career out of it.”

The military was something the men in his family did as a phase in life, not as the main part of their lives.

“My dad was a rancher and then he worked in a sawmill for all the time that I was growing up,” he said. “I worked at the sawmill before I came in for about a year before I came in the service.”

He said he decided to join the Air Force as a way to pay for college. He’d tried to save up for an education.

“I was spending more on girls than I was on saving for college, so I said, ‘OK, I’ll do what my brothers have done before me,’ and I joined the Air Force,” he said.

The Air Force gave him that education. He has a bachelor’s from the University of Maryland, a master’s from Webster University in St. Louis and he spent a year in a post-grad program at Harvard learning about information technology and security.

But his career wasn’t all books and studying or even just command jobs overseeing bases and communications. Hayes is a veteran of the Vietnam War and Operation Iraqi Freedom as well as the U.S. invasion of Panama.

Even after all of that, he said, he’s got plenty to contribute to the borough.

“I’m not anywhere close to ready for retirement,” Hays said.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.