Life is too much fun to be boring

Bob and Genie Hanson are the types of folks a person would need a lifetime's worth of coffee to chat with.

 

I was blessed with their company last Wednesday afternoon in my home for coffee and rolls.

After learning of Bob’s Alzheimer's diagnosis from his column this week, I called the Hanson home almost immediately. For a long time I have wanted to hear the Hanson story firsthand. 

 

Bob’s great grandparents came to this country with just a suitcase, one they still have in their home.

 

A Korean War veteran who spent most of his service time in Japan as a war spy, Bob returned home and attended college on the GI bill going to school for sales and accounting. 

 

Although vowing never to sell insurance, Bob became a Thrivent dealer, serving more than 2,200 across southern Minnesota. 

 

He met his wife Genie in Twin Lakes Minnesota. Two weeks later he asked her to go out for a hamburger. The pair have been married 63 years as of Sept. 28, 2026.

 

Six years separate the almost 90 year old man and his wife Genie. They raised two beautiful children, both now in their 60s.

 

Acceptance and self care were two important lessons the couple talked of.

 

Their faith: Genie says, “We are children of God.”

 

Time goes so fast, they say, how can anyone be bored?

 

Whoosh, the couple says, and 1988, the year of their retirement, became 2026.

 

Where should you vacation? The man who has seen the continental United States says Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming. Arrowhead Lodge in Sheridan, Bob answered. 

 

I asked Bob about his health. If not for Bob and Genie’s openness, I would have had no idea Bob was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The diagnosis came after a routine blood check this past summer. 

 

I am grateful for the Hansons for sitting down with me. A lesson to myself from this experience is not to put things off. I blinked and a decade went by. Reading Bob’s column this past week, I didn’t let a day go by before I called their home to set up a time to chat.

 

One of my first assignments at the newspaper was typing in Bob’s handwritten columns. That was almost 15 years ago. When I got something wrong, he would call and in the kindest, most upbeat voice, explain what I had gotten wrong and that ‘Things should be written the way he intended.’ What he explained was his writing voice, my first introduction to such a topic.

 

Bob reminded me of a story I had forgotten. My dad almost sold the Star Eagle to someone else a few years prior to my taking over as publisher. Bob told my dad he needed to think of my mother and me. He would be putting us out of a job if he sold the paper. 

 

Thank you Bob, for helping save the paper.