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Monday, April 21, 2008
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As a coach, he had a simple lecture for Baxter boys EVERYDAY PEOPLE Associate Editor Bill Hansen doesn't have to search very far to conjure up memories of his rural Brainerd boyhood. His childhood farm household is just a stone's throw away from the comfortable home he and his wife, Becky, live in now, a few miles south of Brainerd along Highway 25.
His grandfather, Soren Hansen, bought the homestead from the railroad in the 1870s after immigrating to Minnesota from Denmark. Hansen said there were a few other Danish families in the Brainerd area at that time. Among the Danes he recalled were three "old maid sisters" who lived into their 90s, yet who were usually referred to as the "Stendahl girls."
Farm kids were very ingenious at play, Hansen recalled. He and his siblings designed a makeshift parachute out of sheets and clothes pins and attempted to leap off the tall straw stacks his father had left in the field.
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With the exception of time spent in the military, Bill Hansen of rural Brainerd has lived his entire life on the homestead his grandfather bought from the railroad in the 1870s. Brainerd Dispatch/Steve Kohls
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"I was afraid I'd get hurt so I had my sister jump off first," Hansen said with a smile.
Hansen, 78, also enlisted his sisters in 4-H projects, building snow forts and in playing soldier as he carried a gun on his shoulder.
"I'd march my sisters around," he said. "I'd make them tuck their skirts in their bloomers 'cause they didn't look like men."
His father put an abrupt end to one scheme as Hansen pretended to manufacture P-40 airplanes out of old boxes in an old shed. Hansen took some old oil fuel and put a wick in it to provide heat for his manufacturing plant but the smoke it produced attracted the attention of his dad and resulted in the operation being shut down.
The Hansen family milked about 30 cows and ran a milk route for their own Clo-Alfa Dairy. Hansen recalled his father handing off one delivery to someone else after the residents threw dishwater out the screen window and hit him square in the face. To feed the cows, the Hansens raised grain, hay and corn. Now Hansen rents out much of his land to other farmers.
"There was never a dull moment," he said of farming. "If we weren't making hay we were gardening."
Before becoming a full-time farmer Hansen attended Brainerd Junior College and served a stint in the Army. He would have gone to Korea during that war but his time in the service was just about up and his superiors didn't see the sense in shipping him overseas and then shipping him back.
"I didn't argue with them," Hansen said.
Back on the farm, Hansen remembered his mother singing old gospel tunes as they would milk the cows.
"My uncle would sing, but he wasn't a good singer," Hansen said.
Bill Hansen
Age: 78.
Occupation: Retired teacher and farmer.
Family: Wife, Becky; four children; five grandsons.
Hobbies you've enjoyed: Model airplanes, cats and dogs.
What are you reading? A book on French writer Alexis de Tocqueville and another on the Plains Indians. He enjoys Shelby Foote's Civil War books.
Favorite TV channel: The History Channel.
Wisdom gained from your parents: "Keeping my mouth shut."
The last thing you splurged on: "A trip to Norway."
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Returning to the farm and civilian life also meant rejoining Trinity Lutheran Church's choir, where a young teacher named Becky - the woman he would marry - was also singing. Hansen asked her out a year later.
"You don't want to make any quick moves," he said explaining his deliberate manner. "What if she said no."
After they married in 1955 they started a family that grew to include three boys and one girl.
While he disliked weeding the garden and milking cows wasn't much fun, it was likely an altercation with one of his cows that prompted him to consider an alternative career to farming. He once had an unwilling cow in a head-hold "but it didn't hold the feet." The result was a painful stomping for Hansen.
In his late 20s or early 30s Hansen decided to finish work for a four-year education degree at St. Cloud State University.
"I couldn't think of anything I'd rather do," he said.
Starting a career in elementary education at a time when there weren't many men in that field, Hansen recalled being sat down in a corner and interrogated on his philosophy of education. "At the time I didn't have much of a philosophy," he said.
He said he was the first male teacher hired at Baxter Elementary School. Hansen eventually went on to earn a master's degree in education, but always enjoyed sharing the practical aspects of life on the farm with his pupils.
Once he took his elementary school pupils out to his property to cut and number logs and then hauled them back to the Baxter school for assembly.
"You'd never in this world do that now," he said.
Hansen also started the first basketball program at the Baxter school. He served as both coach and referee and the coaching methods he employed were pretty basic.
"Just don't kill anyone," he'd lecture the boys. Hansen retired from teaching in 1991, after 29 years.
In February of 2006 he suffered a serious stroke while he was at the Brainerd Family YMCA. He said he was fortunate that a doctor, a police officer and a lawyer all happened to be at the "Y" when he had his stroke. He was soon flown to St. Cloud and the doctors there initially thought he'd never walk again.
He does walk now, with the assistance of a walker. Hansen said he hopes to improve his mobility and regularly attends the YMCA's Silver Sneakers program to work toward that end.
While he's been more limited in his activities since the stroke he exercises and is a still a regular at Sunday services at Trinity.
He also reads at home. He estimated he's read 27 books on the Civil War since his stroke. Hansen also enjoys watching the History Channel.
Hansen is grateful for the help he gets from both family and friends.
"Thank the good Lord for Becky and for Joni (his sister)," he said.
Living in one community his entire life has given him connections that are particularly helpful now when he can't do everything he used to do. He said an old friend, Don Sandberg, mows grass for him and "the Munsch boys" plow snow.
Hansen credited his mother with instilling in him an appreciation for humor, both as a tool to get along with people and a way to establish some perspective on how serious a problem really was.
"She'd always come up with some wiseacre thing," he recalled.
MIKE O'ROURKE may be reached at mike.orourke@brainerddispatch.com or 855-5860.
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