Aurora airport manager gains aviation fame

“You gotta have fun,” Bob Rieser said as he went through a typical day as manager of the Aurora Regional Airport in Sugar Grove.

He oversees airport maintenance, talks with pilots and passengers and might even sneak away for a few minutes to work on his 1957 Cessna or take it for a ride.

It’s a job he’s done since 1978, earning a variety of accolades and awards. But perhaps none are as great as the honor he received May 25 when Rieser was inducted into the Illinois Aviation Hall of Fame as its first professional airport manager.

“I might live in a rare sphere where work and joy occupy the same space,” said Rieser, 58. “I just enjoy what I do.”

Getting inducted involves more than a successful career, Wayne Kessler, president of the Illinois Aviation Hall of Fame, said.

“One of the things that matters when we select someone is their volunteer efforts,” Kessler said. “It’s important that we see there are volunteer efforts, not only in the aviation field but also in their community.”

Rieser said he has been involved the Aurora community by hosting free air shows and dances in hangars and letting groups fly model airplanes in a remote corner of the airport’s property. Partnering with the Fox Valley Sport Aviation Association in its Young Eagles program, which gives small airplane rides to youths, is another community outreach program Rieser has supported.

Teaching children about flying and careers in aviation is important to Rieser, who grew up on Aurora’s near east side and remembers driving to the airport with his family to watch planes land and take off.

In the 1990s, Rieser started a partnership with Waubonsee Community College that lets students get credit for courses in aviation without the college having to buy airplanes, hire flight instructors or handle the liability of students learning to fly, Rieser said.

“It’s the extras that bring that person to the attention of the aviation community,” said Gene Littlefield, a flight instructor who taught Rieser flight acrobatics.

This was the first time Rieser was nominated for the hall. Kessler said that’s an uncommon feat, but Littlefield isn’t surprised.

“In Bob’s case, there was never a question,” Littlefield said.

Rieser joins about 100 others inducted since the Illinois Aviation Hall of Fame was established in 1970, Kessler said.

Under Rieser’s control, Aurora Municipal Airport has grown to a facility that hosts 35 jets and about 20 competing companies, including an air ambulance service.

“It has gone from a pure recreational airport to probably the largest economic asset Aurora has in terms of impact. It is the front door to our community. Business works with business aviation and their first impression when they step off that plane of Aurora is right out there,” Rieser said, motioning at the tarmac. “So we’re the front door.”

Rieser credits his wife, Merry, for putting up with all the time he spends at the airport, usually coming in seven days a week.

“If it’s not working, it’s playing with my own airplane,” Rieser said. “Working on this is good brain therapy for me. I like to fix things. It’s good peace.”

As the longest-tenured manager of a public airport in Illinois, Rieser frequently handles queries from other airport managers about how to address situations such as February’s blizzard, during which the Aurora airport stayed open.

Educated as an engineer, Rieser began working at the airport as an intern in 1971, when a runway expansion was under way. He said he rose to manager in 1978 by offering to fill in when the manager requested a three-month leave. That manager never returned and Rieser has kept the position ever since.

Although he wasn’t trained as a pilot when he took over as airport manager, Rieser decided learning to fly would help him do his job.

“It makes a difference when you’re in the air versus on the ground,” Rieser said. “I think it’s also helped my focus of putting together a program for development here over the years of things that are important to making the airport more functional, safer and more attractive to the business community. It’s the engineer in me still coming out.”