David Phillip Haston

David Haston, known to everybody as ?Dave,? was a general contractor who helped his father build barns when he was a young man, and who spent most of his working career building houses and doing remodeling. He was a master craftsman who taught carpentry and mechanical skills to several nephews and young men from the Carmel area who worked for him at different times. He was a good-natured, hard-working man who always seemed to look on the positive side of things, and who helped his neighbors and served his home community in a number of ways. Among his lifelong interests were Indiana basketball, airplanes ? especially the B-17 Flying Fortress ? and the American Wild West. He was born in Broad Ripple on November 25, 1915, to William Harvey and Alice Moody Carr Haston. Shortly after his birth the family moved to West 116th Street in Clay Township, Hamilton County. He was the youngest of three boys; there were three sisters and a half-sister. After graduating from Carmel High School in 1934 he followed his father into the contracting business. He attended Purdue University in 1939-40, intending to major in Diesel engineering, but on October 10, 1941, at the age of 24, two mo...[more]

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s before Pearl Harbor, he joined the Army Air Corps. He trained as an aircraft mechanic and was assigned to a squadron of B-17 Flying Fortresses stationed first in Hawaii and then in the New Hebrides. He and his unit received three bronze stars for the Midway and Solomon Islands campaigns. He returned to the U.S. with the rank of sergeant and finished out the war at Alexandria, Louisiana, where he trained B-17 crews and served as a crew chief and flight-engineer instructor. On Valentine?s Day, 1944, he married Margaret Langolf of Indianapolis. Their first child, Barbara Diane, was born in Louisiana on July 20, 1945. In peacetime he returned to the Carmel area and re-entered the contracting business. His second child, Janet Elaine, was born on April 27, 1948. In 1955 he and Margaret built a ranch-style house at the SW corner of Township Line Road and West 116th Street, where they would reside for the remainder of their lives. He and Margaret were married for 55 years. She died in May of 1999. David served for 20 years on the Carmel Library Board. He also served on the Carmel High School Board, and the Carmel Board of Zoning Appeals. He was a serious fan of Indiana basketball and during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s traveled up and down the state in order to attend numerous boys? high-school games. For many years he coached Little League Basketball teams in Carmel. Among his young players were Billy Shepherd and David Shepherd, who later starred for Carmel High School and played at college and professional levels. After the war he took flying lessons, obtained his pilot?s license, and flew private planes for the next twenty-five years, beginning with a Piper Cub, and moving on up to series of twin-engine aircraft owned jointly with other area pilots. He had a lifelong interest in cowboys, gunslingers, Native Americans, and the American Wild West. His piloting enabled him to take many trips to places like Dodge City, Kansas, and Tombstone, Arizona, in order to visit historic sites. Sometimes he took Margaret on those flights, sometimes he took the two girls, and sometimes he was accompanied by friends from the Carmel area. He kept working as a builder until he was 75. During his retirement years he took up the game of golf, and devoted to his playing the same patience and exactitude he had shown in so many other areas during his long and productive life.