The Blue Guidon The Newsletter of Andover and the Military
Summer 2024
Andover Values Help Career Take Flight By Rush Taylor ’96
Capt. Hanson Causbie, center, leads a post-mission discussion with crew chiefs in Syria in 2018.
I recently interviewed U.S. Army Reserve Maj. Hanson Causbie ’08 to find out more about his unexpected journey through life, from his accidental discovery of Andover to his multiple deployments as an Army aviator and, finally, to his next chapter as a transportation-focused attorney. I caught up with Hanson just after he had put his 11-month-old daughter to bed at their home in Arlington, Virginia. Hanson Causbie did not dream of flying Apache attack helicopters in the Army while growing up in Methuen, Massachusetts. His mother worked in health-care management, focusing on workplace risk management, and his father, a lawyer, mostly did elder law and estate planning. While attending public middle school in Methuen, Causbie had a science teacher who had graduated from Andover and mentioned the idea to him. Causbie also realized they had a family friend who attended Andover who was also very supportive of
the idea. He credits Andover’s generous financial aid offer as the only way his family could afford the opportunity. As a day student, Causbie spent 12 to 14 hours a day during the week on campus—split between classes, sports, studying, and volunteering. His first impression of Andover echoed many other students’ introduction to the school in that “the kids were just way too smart” and the intimidation of moving from a public school to Andover was all too real—but the opportunities seemed endless. Causbie stayed busy with extracurricular activities, such as rowing, cross country, volunteering with ARC, and representing other day students on the day student council, which helped embed the service mentality he espouses to this day. At Andover, he also earned a fellowship that allowed him to visit Mongolia. There, he worked in an orphanage, acquiring a perspective few ever experience firsthand. When he returned to campus, Causbie settled continued on page 2