Ivan Lester Hatcher was born at home in Streeter, West Virginia, the third child and first son, to Lilly E. McKinney Hatcher and Darcy H. L. Hatcher on October 29, 1931. Being a youngster during the Great Depression, he would spend part of the school year working on the family farm with horse-drawn machinery and then come back to school to catch up his studies.
From his own descriptions, he enjoyed his experiences as he grew up on "Hatcher Hill" with his brothers, sisters, cousins, and neighbors. Experiences included things most people never encounter such as waking during winter mornings with the need to shake the snow off the bed covers before rising and learning how to detect by copperheads by their scent. He also tested his immunity by climbing up and down trees that were covered with poison ivy and skinning it off the tree as he went. As a teenager, he was already a practical but possibly unconventional, problem solver. He forded mountain streams that crossed the way home with his car using cardboard to block the air vents on top of the hood to keep the water from coming in through them.
In his teens he did various jobs including working all three shifts during a day as a driver at a Green Giant farm in Illinois, catching catnaps when possible, then transporting other workers between sites on the farm. Later in his teens, he worked hanging heavy electrical power lines across the West Virginia mountains and driving trucks. It was during that time when the threat of the Korean War popped up.
With a friend, he decided to join the United States Marine Corp just before the Korean War actually started. Due to the impending threat, his boot camp was accelerated, leaving nothing out but only having about half the normal time to train. Upon reaching Korea, he was part of the Inchon Landing operation. While serving in Korea, he did several different jobs including building and maintaining the electrical power grid for the bases where he resided. Only in the last year or two of his life would he speak of his work in solo operations to gain information about enemy intentions.
After returning to civilian life, he had several different jobs such as an auto mechanic, owning his own shop at one point, and an independent trucker, driving large tractor-trailer rigs cross country for the Mason-Dixon trucking company.
While visiting his West Virginia family, he was introduced to Delma Cox who was a country girl who lived with her parents in an area not far from where he grew up. They were married in July of 1956 and spent several months in Tennessee then returned to West Virginia where Delma was always close to family when Ivan was away because she was expecting their first child. After Roger's birth, they moved to the Louisville, Kentucky area, where he continued driving trucks cross country, and at the same time was training to be a commercial pilot. He switched from truck driving to piloting aircraft full-time in the mid-60s.
While piloting, he gained experience quickly and changed jobs a number of times to advance his career, including flying the corporate jet for Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), General Manager of the major fixed base operation (FBO) in Tallahassee, Florida, bring it back to black and General Manager of the company which ran the FBOs in Columbus and in Seymour, Indiana which under his management received an award for being third in the world in sales in his tenure.
In another career move, he flew the corporate aircraft while managing half the operations for a coal mining company, in WV. After that, he ran construction operations that included building a water treatment plant and removing the threat of a mountainside sliding over a cliff onto the houses below. Finally, he decided to start and run his own logging operation.
After a number of years in West Virginia, he ended up in Louisville again, where Delma remained upon their separation.
Later he moved to Venice Florida as the Chief of Flight Operations for a company that sold aircraft ranging from the smallest to Boeing 747s all over the world. As part of his duties, he personally was involved in demonstrating aircraft to the band Motley Crue and training John Travolta on an aircraft which they had sold him. It was in Florida, he met long-time companion Sheilah Carlson and he entered a semi-retirement. He took some short term flying jobs that were based in Indiana, and later Atlanta, Georgia before finally "retiring" in New Mexico in the late 1990s.
In New Mexico, he decided that there was a lack of good recreational vehicle repair facilities in his area. This resulted in his decision to start an RV repair business that had demand for its services for several hundred miles around his location. He kept at this activity until health issues finally demanded that he retire within the last few years of his life.
During the late portion of his life, he experienced heart issues and finally the pancreatic cancer that was the cause of his death on July 5th, 2015, at the age of 83. Although he led a full life, he would have told you that his health problems were the result of the 40+ years of smoking despite the fact that he had not smoked in the last 15 years.
Ivan is survived by sons, Roger (Melinda) Hatcher of Marion, Iowa, Richard (Carrie) Hatcher of Louisville, Kentucky, and daughter Connie Hatcher of Columbus, Indiana. Also surviving are grandchildren, Amy (Nick) Friesen of Iowa, temporarily residing in Germany, Tyler and Trenton Hatcher of Louisville, Kentucky, and great-granddaughter Jolee Friesen in Germany. Companion Sheilah Carlson and his faithful dog, Dutchess of Deming, New Mexico, plus a brother Ira Damon (Jessie) Hatcher of Shepherdsville, Kentucky and sisters Virginia Frances Stamper and Rita Marion, of Mount Washington, Kentucky also survive along with many nephews and nieces in the mid-western and western areas of the United States.
He was proceeded in death by his parents, brother Denver Hatcher of Ohio and sister Willa Reed of West Virginia.
As you can see, he was never one to spend a lot of time idle, however, he always made it a priority to be off during the Christmas holidays to be with his family. During these times, a number of fun activities ensued such as sledding trips using homemade sleds or trips back to his old stomping grounds in the wilder areas of West Virginia. Vacation times in other seasons resulted in hunting, fishing, and camping trips along with visits to see relatives were typical. Though mostly self-taught, he had a great working knowledge of many things, responded to most problems with working solutions and taught his kids to be practical thinkers. Growing up as one of his kids, you found that you had learned a lot from the discipline that he maintained and from his willingness to tackle problems of all kinds.
He will be missed.