Hanson was born in Fort Thomas, Ky., but moved to Villa Hills with her family as a child. She attended Notre Dame Academy in Park Hills, Ky., where she was a member of the National Honor Society and played soccer, softball, basketball and worked as the basketball statistician for two years.
After graduating from the Academy in 1991, Hanson attended Northern Kentucky University and majored in biology, chemistry and secondary education. While working part-time in the chemistry stock room setting up labs for professors, Hanson met a young man she’d been eying for years, Jim Hanson.
“My husband was working in the stock room also, but it wasn’t the first time I’d seen him,” said Hanson, of her husband, who had spent four years in the military as a medic before attending college.
“I remember seeing him in church when I was in the seventh grade and I had a feeling then that I was going to meet him at some point. Later, I was sitting in front of my friend’s house and I saw him carrying logs into the house across the street. It turned out his sister was married to the guy across the street. We even coached different soccer teams at the same time on the same playing field, but we didn’t meet each other.”
Unbeknownst to Hanson, Jim Hanson also had noticed her at school. Fate took its course, when the two found themselves working in the same chemistry stock room at NKU.
“I told him, ‘I’ve been stalking you since seventh grade,’ ” said Hanson, who taught at her alma mater, Notre Dame Academy, while Jim Hanson worked at Proctor & Gamble after graduating from NKU.
“The Air Force recruiter had education opportunities in the medical technology field, so Jim joined the Air Force and got commissioned and we married in 1996. Within four months, I got married, left my job, moved to Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., and I got pregnant. I didn’t go back to teaching in Washington, because I didn’t think I’d be the kind of teacher I want to be, or the kind of mother I wanted to be if I did both.”
Hanson currently has three children: Kendal, an eighth-grade student on the cross-country and soccer teams at Bellbrook Middle School; Eva, a fifth-grade student and Girl Scout, who is member of the soccer team at Bell Creek Intermediate School; and Jorin, a third-grade student at Bell Creek, who also is involved in soccer and a Boy Scout.
Hanson lived at Hill AFB in Utah, where she tutored students and then moved to Sacramento, Calif.
In 2002, Hanson returned home to Kentucky, while her husband completed a graduate degree in microbiology at the University of Cincinnati as part of the Air Force Institute of Technology. In 2004, Hanson returned to Washington, D.C., where her husband worked in a Bio Level 3 Laboratory affiliated with Walter Reed Medical Center, while she coordinated an after-school science program and was a member of the PTA. After moving to Incirlik, Turkey, with her family in 2008, Hanson worked as a substitute teacher in the Department of Defense School. She also traveled around Turkey and toured European countries.
Contact this columnist at (937) 432-9054 or jjbaer@aol.com.
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