Couple proud of life of service

Anyone who parents children knows that the day will come when a child graduates and moves on to bigger and better things.

For some that day is too soon in coming, for others it can’t come soon enough. In any case, tears are usually shed as bags are loaded and kids move into dorms or apartments or military housing units.

For Louanne Hausmann, saying goodbye to her son Jake held these emotions, but she was given the opportunity to do something most parents of children entering the Marine Corps never even consider: Louanne, a retired Air Force major, was allowed to swear in her son as he arrived at Camp Pendleton to report for basic training in August.

“It was an honor. It was a privilege,” Hausmann said.

Louanne and her husband, John, both had long military careers. John served in the Air Force as a medic in the Aerospace Medical Division and was an instructor for the Medical Corps during Desert Storm. Louanne served in the Nursing Corps and taught senior noncommissioned officers to be senior managers of wards and clinics. John retired from the military in the mid-1990s. Louanne was still on active duty at the time and spent 15 months unaccompanied in the Azores.

Upon her return, the family chose from three locations for their next station and agreed on Fairchild Air Force Base. John had done his survival training there and remembered that it reminded him of some of his favorite places in Europe.

Louanne was in her own words, an “Air Force brat. I was 12 before I knew any American kids who grew up in one house,” she said with a laugh from the dining room of the Hausmann’s north Spokane home. Louanne has two adult daughters from her first marriage, and she and John have two children, Lisa and Jake who were born while the Hausmanns were on active duty and stationed in Germany.

The couple speak of the time with great fondness. Luann served in the same squadron as her father. He was stationed in France, but the squadron was later moved to Germany, where 22 years later Louanne was stationed with her own family.

While she is retired from the Air Force, Louanne is still employed full-time as a nurse for Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Holy Family Medical Center.

“It was an honor and a privilege to serve my country,” she says of her career.

John and Louanne have great hopes for Jake’s future. He was active in Boy Scouts from the third grade through his senior year at Mead High School. Jake achieved the rank of Eagle Scout earlier this year. He organized a work party and helped build play equipment for the Hausmann’s church, St. Luke Lutheran Church.

“It will help Jake in his career that he grew up in a military family,” John said.