In 1964, Kusche graduated from Arizona State University (ASU). He completed a training course to become a commercial flight engineer, but, as he told the Tucson Daily Citizen in 1975, "I decided I didn't like it, so the day I was supposed to report for work, I resigned and came back to Arizona. I just didn't like being an engineer, the guy with hundreds and hundreds of instruments and controls. You really can't see out of the airplane."
