Rotorcraft Career
Thus, was born Hadley’s new career with helicopters. (He still stayed connected to fixed-wings; when the small unit needed a plane in the air, it borrowed Hadley’s Cardinal.) The next year, 1982, he was invited to attend HAI Heli-Expo. “That was an eye-opening experience for me,” he says, and soon thereafter he joined the Airborne Law Enforcement Association (now the Airborne Public Safety Association) and wound up on its board of directors.
Hadley retired from the Tulsa force in 2001, and only five days later he began his business career with an MRO, Consolidated Heliflight, as director of marketing. (Shortly after his start with that company, its name changed to Northstar Aerospace.) After four years of working on the marketing side of the company, including international travel, Hadley was promoted to general manager.
All this executive experience and travel primed Hadley to be recruited in 2006 as U.S. CEO for North American Turbines in Miami, where he was given the immediate mandate to relocate the business. Hadley and its Gibraltar-based ownership changed the company’s name to Segers Aero Corp. and in a couple of years, the business relocated to the town of Fairhope, Alabama, on the Gulf Coast. “I moved 55 families from Miami to Baldwin County, Alabama. It was a huge culture shock, but we were still on the water and it worked out very well. Many of those families still remain in the area.”
When he realized his seven years as Segers’ CEO was coming to an end, Hadley and wife formed Main Line Helicopter LLC, which acquired the manufacturing and distribution rights for Helicopter Handler in 2013 from Jacques Guequierre. “Sherry was president and I was vice president,” he says.
Sadly, Sherry passed away this past November. Not only was she beloved by her husband, but she was also well liked and respected in the helicopter community. Among her contributions to the industry: she served for over 15 years as executive director of the Airborne Law Enforcement Association. Even after Sherry’s tenure as ALEA’s executive director, she continued to be responsible for managing trade show
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logistics up to the point of her passing. “The best and greatest thing in my life for the past 31 years has been my wife. Sherry was pointing me in the right direction for more times than I like to admit. She was my rock. She’s been by my side since 1992 and kept me focused and grounded. (Hadley understandably alternates between past and present tense when talking about his recently deceased love.) That’s why we’ve been successful at Main Line and why I had successful careers. We had each other to lean on and sought advice from each other. I’d been a bachelor for nine years when I met Sherry, and we just clicked from the start and enjoyed life together. I would say my marriage to Sherry was my greatest accomplishment,
if I can call that an accomplishment. She was more than that.”
Main Line and Helicopter Handler were intended as a semiretirement occupation for the couple, but it kicked off the busiest of times for them. If you haven’t noticed, Hadley has a pattern of so-called “retiring” and then quickly jumping into a new job or career before a microscopic moss spore has a chance to germinate. His “retirement” from Segers proved no exception. Not only did he not really retire, instead cranking up a new company with Sherry, but he also
decided to compound their
activities by
signing a one-year contract to be the chief operating officer for a defense-logistics company in Virginia.
Sherry handled Main Line’s home office in Fairhope during the daytime and Hadley moonlighted to fulfill his part of their shared responsibilities from Virginia, which involved calculating price quotes and costs. He also piloted his way back to Fairhope monthly for long weekends. (Virginia to the Alabama coast is not the shortest commute!)
Adding another wrinkle in these logistics is that Helicopter Handlers are not made in Fairhope, but built by PBZ Manufacturing in the middle of Pennsylvania Dutch/Amish country. All welding and fabrication happen there
in one smooth, quality-controlled
process and the products ship to Main Line’s customers from The Keystone State. To stress the value of this long-distance relationship, Hadley says, “My main challenge today (for Helicopter Handler) is to maintain an excellent relationship with our manufacturing company in Pennsylvania. It would be a huge challenge to find someone who would do as good a job as they have done for us.”
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