In the 1990s, Rick Tetrev wore polished shoes to work as Naval Air Station Brunswick’s second-in-command.

On July 23, the Woolwich man was in Gap sneakers, walking Wiscasset Municipal Airport’s hardstand and jotting down planes’ registration numbers on a clipboard. 

Tetrev is the airport supervisor, reporting to airport manager Frank Costa.

“I love it. I absolutely love it. It is never slow. Every day there is something going on,” Tetrev, 66, said about the job he started in June.

The part-time job has him waiting on fuel customers, mowing, notifying hangar owners and others of anything they need to be aware of, and cleaning the bathrooms.

“And I’m proud of them. I want them to be the best bathrooms of any (airport) in this country,” he said.

Earlier in the week, he helped Costa and hangar owner Mike Muchmore troubleshoot a problem with a pump for the fuel the airport sells.

Although his duties have changed since his years in service dress, Tetrev approaches his work at the town-owned airport no differently, and thinks no less of it, than he did of his work chasing Russian submarines during the Cold War or serving at the Pentagon as an aide to a three-star admiral.

“I don’t, because my background with my mom and dad was, if you’re given a job, you’ve got to do it the best you can, and so that’s more what I’m looking at than what I’m doing.

“I think that philosophy given me by them has served me well in everything I’ve done.”

Some people think that due to their prior lines of work, they’re too important for the kind of work he’s doing now, he said. “I hope that I don’t ever get to that.”

A job that a retired admiral friend of his, Oak Osborn, took at a Belgrade Lakes golf course had also stuck in Tetrev’s mind as an example of fun, useful work that could be done in retirement.

“I’d go up to play golf, and he’d drive down to the parking lot and pick the golfers up. And I thought, ‘Isn’t that the perfect job.’ And he was an admiral. So if an admiral can drive a golf cart, then a commander can clean toilets,” Tetrev said, laughing.

When the lineman’s job opened up at the Wiscasset airport, Costa asked his friend Tetrev if he could help find someone. “So I looked around quite a bit,” Tetrev said. “And after about six weeks, I knew that the summer was upon us and he needed somebody. So I just thought, well, I don’t know anybody better. And I certainly have the time or could make the time for it, so I told Frank I’d be happy to do it.”

But with his 26 years in the Air Force and Navy, Tetrev thought he could do more with the position. The job was reworked into being the airport’s supervisor. “I look more at the day-to-day stuff. (Costa) looks at the big picture, meets with selectmen (and) does the heavy lifting. He’s responsible to the town. I’m responsible to Frank.”

Tetrev’s military service first brought him and wife Cecille Tetrev from the San Diego area to Maine in 1978, when he served as lieutenant to Compat Wing Five at Naval Air Station Brunswick. Maine’s way of life was like that of the western North Carolina mountains he grew up in, and the rural Texas of his wife’s youth.

“We felt a big relief coming into Maine,” he said. “We fell in love with it.”

He went on to serve with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then returned to the Brunswick base and held various jobs with the VP-10 squadron there; had command of the Naval facility in Keflavik, Iceland; and came back to Brunswick as the base’s executive officer (XO), or second-in-command, through the end of 1996. He could have stayed in the position another year but retired to go to work for the Bath-Brunswick Region Chamber of Commerce. He directed the 16-town chamber for five years, including when Maine Yankee was headed for closure.

Wiscasset was not part of the chamber but some of its businesses were members. So Tetrev attended many meetings about the nuclear power plant in Wiscasset.

That experience helped him later, when he chaired a committee that made the Brunswick community’s case to keep the Naval base open.

“I was very involved in that for several years, and very disappointed when the verdict came out,” he said. The base had survived multiple rounds of base closures before its shutdown in 2011.

Tetrev’s character, his Naval experience and knowledge, and his ability to communicate are an asset to Wiscasset and the airport, Costa said. “He is a great addition.”

As part of the Tetrevs’ plan to make Maine their permanent home, they bought Brunswick Tour & Travel in 1979, with a partner. The Tetrevs own it on their own now, running it out of their Middle Road, Woolwich, home and serving clients from around the world.

His wife does most of the work and has done a magnificent job keeping the business going, he said. He functions as her second-in-command, he said.

“I’m her XO.”