George Hessler was born in 1917 in Mt. Healthy, Ohio. He had been interested in aviation from the day his father took him out to the Blue Ash Airport to watch parachutists drop out of airplanes. He wanted to be a pilot since boyhood but got into air traffic control during World War II.

After the War, Hessler worked in Cincinnati, Columbus and Peoria before he began training air traffic controllers in Cleveland in 1951. Between 1959 and 1965, he worked in New York at what is now called Kennedy International. He returned to Cleveland as part of the Eastern Region. In 1969, he returned to Cincinnati as Chief Air Traffic Controller of the Greater Cincinnati Airport. This position was a dream come true.

"It is the greatest job in the airport" he was known to say. "It's an exacting job, done by egotists who are also perfectionists. We have to feel we're the best because, if you don't feel that way, you couldn't stay ahead of the game."

He was very fond of the quote by Harvey MacKay, " Find something you love to , and you'll never work a day in your life." He felt his career in air traffic control enabled him to do that. His favorite poem was High Flight by John Magee which he recited often to children and grandchildren. He was a man who loved what and he did and even in his 80's would look to the skies to point out airplanes and say, " There's a 727, headed for Chicago."