John Zeidler, president of Evansville Regional Airport (KEVV)-based Tri-State Aero, didn’t come by his aviation career through his family, as many do. Rather, he came to the industry as a result of Midwestern practicality. “I grew up in Southern Illinois in the 1960s,” he said. “It isn’t that I was a stranger to aviation–my grandfather owned some apartment buildings in Biloxi and we’d fly down there periodically in a Cessna 210–but we weren’t really an aviation family.” Zeidler’s family owned a number of businesses, including a radio station, an auto parts store, a Redi-Mix concrete business and automobile dealerships.
“I grew up around several different businesses and would help out when I wasn’t in school. Initially I started doing basic jobs, gradually took on more responsibility and by the time I was in college I was working in the front office. It was an excellent, diverse background that laid a good foundation for going into business myself,” he said.
