Family ties keep Fayette City man close to home
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one in a monthlong series of profiles of the people who live and work in Washington, Greene and Fayette counties, in celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary.
Dave Hayden first met his future wife in passing at Mentor Road Bible Church in Elizabeth, where his father was a pastor and her uncle was a parishioner.
But it wasn’t until years later, when he was back from military service in Asia, that he and Emily found each other on MySpace.
They’re both introverts, but the similarities end there, Hayden said. He was into anime and video games, while she didn’t like the “nerdy stuff.” If they were choosing music for their profile page, she’d opt for hip-hop, and he’d pick rock and heavy metal.
Despite the differences, they quickly moved from each other’s top eight to top one.
“We just started chatting online, and then I asked her out, and that was that,” Hayden said. “From that point on, we’ve been together.”
They’ve been a couple for 18 years, and married for 15, moving to a home in Fayette City soon after their wedding.
That love has been passed down to their four children — two boys and two girls. Aside from their Nintendo Switch, so has the no-technology rule Hayden’s household had in his childhood.
“I think they’ll be more well-rounded adults if they’re not glued to the screen throughout their whole childhood,” he said.
Fortunately, in addition to the video games, they also love fishing, going to parks, family walks and the movies. On a recent weekday, he combined two family pastimes – fishing with his children along a pond in Patsy Hillman Park in Luzerne Township.
Family ties also come into play. They’ll go on vacations with the families of his three brothers, who have a combined nine kids between them.
Last year, they visited Lancaster to see the Sight & Sound Theater, which performs Christian musicals. For several days, the family played corn hole, or sat around the bonfire.
“We rented an Airbnb that would fit all of us,” he said. “It was 20 of us under one roof.”
The family’s house at the top of the hill near the cemetery in Fayette City is about a mile from his wife’s parents, and close to her aunt and uncle. And Hayden’s parents have since moved nearby too.
Hayden takes his 14-year-old son to mow their lawns, as well as Hayden’s grandmother’s.
“I’m trying to instill in him a work ethic and some responsibility now,” he said.
Hayden has already demonstrated his own. After high school, he entered the Marine Corps, spending most of his four years in Japan, the Philippines, Thailand and South Korea.
His main role was building and setting up computer networks with the Marine Expeditionary Force to practice real-world scenarios in joint operations, though he was also called on to assist when a tsunami hit Thailand in 2005.
He remembered talking with children from the displaced village who would come up to ask for MREs, and the day he and his fellow Mariners rode into a village in a Humvee and staged there.
“It was like we were rock stars there,” he said. “They were pointing at my nose, like, ‘Oh, your nose is so pointy.’ They’d never seen white people, so it was new to them.”
He has plenty of other fond memories of those years — the aquariums of Okinawa, the many food options around the base, and admittedly, drinking with the Japanese.
And he remembers the Philippines, where the people were great, and the driving was frightening. He’d be on a motorcycle traveling through mountainous areas and see a motorcycle with four people on it coming up behind him.
“They would shoot out right behind you into the oncoming traffic, and then hurry up and zip right back in front of you at the last second,” he said. “And they would hop all the vehicles in the convoy that way.”
After Hayden returned, he started out painting houses before moving into HVAC controls, where he helps install a building’s HVAC systems on a computer front end, so a building engineer can make sure every room is within a particular set point.
He started off as a field technician, and has moved up to supervisor.
The changing technology and the time crunch are challenging, but also feed into what he loves the most about the job.
“I like to troubleshoot a lot, so if there’s something wrong and I find out what’s wrong with it and fix it,” he said. “I also like training the guys, and the camaraderie that goes on with my team.”
Hayden’s not planning to move out of the Mon Valley anytime soon, at least not while his kids are still in school.
Of course, most of both his and Emily’s families still live here. And there’s always grass to be mowed.
“I don’t think I’d ever move out of the area,” he said. “Too much family tie here.”