Jean Holmes Hansen

Madison - ""Jean Hansen, Winston Churchill, and Mark Twain were all born on November 30. They all drank, they all smoked, and now they are all dead."" That's how Jean Holmes Hansen planned to start her own obituary, but she never got around to writing the rest. She died unexpectedly but peacefully, in her own home, on Monday, December 29, 2008. Jean was born on November 30, 1931 in Evanston, Illinois, the daughter of Wayne and Edith (Holt) Holmes. She is survived by her daughters Kathleen (Eric) Wendorff and Sarah Calvin; grandchildren Timothy John Wendorff and Emily Hansen Wendorff; brothers Robert F. (Betty Jean) Holmes and Dr. Douglas S. (Linda) Holmes; sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law Joyce (Bernard) Gussel, Mary Modjeski, Patrick (Betsy) Jagoe, Father Bede Jagoe, and Charlotte Holmes; many nieces, nephews and other relatives; and a lifetime's worth of friends. She was preceded in death by her husband of 52 years, Richard H. Hansen, her parents, her sister-in-law Lois Holmes, and her nephew David Holmes. Jean grew up a bobby-soxer in San Mateo, California, where she cut school to hear Frank Sinatra, and in New Jersey, where she was editor of the high school newspaper and active in drama, chorus, and the United World Federalist chapter. In 1949, Jean graduated from Millburn High School and entered UW-Madison, where she joined the Gamma Phi Beta sorority. At a freshman mixer, she was rescued from a boorish date by a tall handsome fraternity brother she'd noticed in her journalism class. His name was Dick Hansen. During senior year, on February 5, 1953, Dick and Jean eloped to Dubuque, Iowa. They moved to San Diego for Dick's naval service; to Mauston, Wisconsin and Sheldon, Iowa where Dick reported for small-town newspapers (and Jean inadvertently scandalized Sheldon by smoking a cigarette in public); and in 1960 they returned to Madison, where they settled and raised their family in the Crestwood neighborhood. Jean worked in various offices over the years. Her favorite jobs involved UW students -- working for the Wisconsin Student Association and the Memorial Union Committee Offices, where she got a ringside view of sixties campus politics and occasional whiffs of tear gas; and later for the School of Nursing, where she worked in student services and edited the Nursing News department newsletter. But Jean's real vocation was gardening. From 3 rose bushes planted one spring, her garden steadily expanded in size and variety over the next 40 years, taking over the yard and becoming a neighborhood showplace. Jean also treasured 17 years of February vacations in the Caribbean and Mexico, where she and Dick celebrated their anniversary with warm weather, seafood and snorkeling. After Dick's death in 2005, Jean continued to enjoy her garden, her family (especially her grandchildren), her friends, Badger football, reading piles of books, and avidly following news and politics. A memorial service will be held Saturday, January 31, 2009 at 1:00 PM at COVENANT PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 326 S. Segoe Road, Madison, WI.