[4]: 6  After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, his father enlisted in the U.S. Navy at the age of 38, and the Haise family moved to Chicago.

[4]: 22–26  He served as a U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot, with VMF-533, then VMF-114 on the F2H-4 Banshee and F9F-8 Cougar at MCAS Cherry Point, North Carolina, from March 1954 to September 1956.

Haise also served as a tactics and all-weather flight instructor in the U.S. Navy Advanced Training Command at NAS Kingsville, Texas.

[3] After his military service, Haise returned to school and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree with honors in aeronautical engineering from the University of Oklahoma in 1959, concurrently serving for two years in the Oklahoma Air National Guard, as a fighter interceptor pilot with the 185th Fighter Interceptor Squadron,[6] flying the F-86D.

Haise completed post-graduate courses at the U.S. Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School (Class 64A) at Edwards Air Force Base, California in 1964, and attended the six-week Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program in 1972.

In 1977, he participated in the program's Approach and Landing Tests (ALT) at Edwards Air Force Base.

[3] Haise was assigned to command STS-2A, with Jack R. Lousma as pilot, the second Space Shuttle mission, which would have delivered the Teleoperator Retrieval System that would have boosted Skylab to a higher orbit, preserving it for future use.

Delays in the Shuttle program development as well as an unexpected increase in Skylab's orbital decay led to the mission being canceled.

Skylab was destroyed upon entering the Earth's atmosphere in July 1979, while the Space Shuttle did not launch until April 1981.

[22] In June 1979, Haise left NASA to become a test pilot and executive with Grumman Aerospace Corporation, where he remained until retiring in 1996.

Haise has four children with his first wife Mary Griffin Grant, whom he married on June 4, 1954, and divorced on July 21, 1978.

[25] On August 22, 1973, Haise was piloting a Convair BT-13 belonging to the Commemorative Air Force that had been converted to look like an Aichi D3A "Val" torpedo bomber for the 1970 film Tora!

[29] Haise is a fellow of the American Astronautical Society (AAS) and the Society of Experimental Test Pilots (SETP); member, Tau Beta Pi, Sigma Gamma Tau, and Phi Theta Kappa; and honorary member, National WWII Glider Pilots Association.