After a three-year stint as a government worker for the transit authority, he decided that wasn’t for him, either. That realization came when a fellow employee told him they don’t respond to customer questions unless the person calls three times.
“I found out the first month that I was really not cut out for government work as I was told constantly to slow down my work pace,” Hagglund said. “My boss also told me that he heard I was after his job. I told him I was not but he mentioned it several times in the three years I worked there.”
After that, he moved to Atlanta and worked for a printing company with nearly 50 facilities around the United States. A month into the job, he learned that the company president didn’t think Hagglund could manage effectively by sitting in the home office. Thus, his life of business travel began. During the next three years, Hagglund would fly out of Atlanta on a Monday or Tuesday and not return until either Thursday or Friday. Over the course of three years, he flew about 500,000 miles.
A bank in Miami later recruited Hagglund, just before the
savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s. On Groundhog Day, the Federal Government took over the savings bank he was working for. Many of his co-workers were escorted out that day. But Hagglund ended up staying with the bank until the end of the year, when he set up his own company and ran it for five years.
From there, he went to work for a company in the medical prosthetics industry, running its U.S. operations.
After September 11, 2001, Hagglund went to work for a government contractor supporting the U.S. military in Iraq and spent two and a half years living and working there. He also traveled to some of the nearby countries in the Middle East.
“When I was down in southern Iraq, I saw the ruins of the city of
Ur, where Abraham grew up,” he said. “I spent the last year up in northern Iraq in the city of Mosul, and I visited the hill overlooking the city of
Nineveh where it’s believed Jonah sat and had his pity-party argument with God.”
The trip wasn’t without its dangers, though. Hagglund traveled through Iraq mostly on low-flying
Blackhawk helicopters so as not to be a target. One day, there were multiple incidents with helicopters going down in Iraq. Hagglund’s wife, Connie, was living in Michigan at that time with their three young children. She was unable to contact him for nearly 18 hours after hearing the news. “From that point on and even today, she never listened to the news when I was traveling,” he said.
On a subsequent job with a government contractor in Cape Canaveral, he once flew around the world with stops in Beijing,
Guangzhou (China), Moscow, Kuwait and Washington, DC. By the time Hagglund left this job of 13 years, he had flown more than 2 million miles.
About two years ago, he took a job with a competitor as Vice President and Director of Capture for defense contractor EMI Services. Hagglund works from his home office in Merritt Island with Connie with two of their adult children. Their oldest works full time and lives in Titusville.
Rotary was a natural choice for Hagglund. As a young man, he admired his pastor, whom he considered an eminently moral man. The pastor was a Rotarian, so Hagglund decided at a young age to be part of a club himself someday.
Community service is a big part of his life. Since 1989, he’s been on the board of the Salvation Army and has served on other non-profit boards, including the Greater Miami Host Committee, Young Life and Big Brothers/Big Sisters. Hagglund is now on the board of
Boys and Girls Clubs of America.
As if that weren’t enough, he’s an official for high school football, basketball, volleyball, baseball and softball. Connie is a football clock official assigned most of the games Hagglund’s crew officiated.
In July, he will be installed as Rockledge Rotary president.
