Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Three Things About Your Father

It's time for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun!

Your mission this week, should you decide to accept it, is to:1)  Sunday, 16 June, is Father's Day.  Let's celebrate by writing a blog post about our Father, or another significant male ancestor (e.g., a grandfather).

2)  What are three things about your father (or significant male ancestor) that you vividly remember about him?

3)  Tell us all about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status or Google+ Stream post.

My dad, Donald George Hansen (1910 - 1959), was born May 14, 1910 in Tooele, Utah.  His parents were Adolph Halfdam and Henrietta Eva (Burbach) Hansen.  His sister Dorothy Eva was about 18 months old at his birth.  The Hansen family has traveled to Utah from the Chicago area for work reasons.  Shortly after his birth the family returned to the Chicago area where Donald spent the remainder of his life.  Donald married Betty Connery on 28 June 1941. 

Betty and Don had nine children ( 5 girls and 4 boys) and I am the oldest. 

1.  While in high school Donald enjoyed playing basketball and played on a state basketball championship team.  He played for the Chicago YMCA team.  The love of basketball remained with him as evidenced by the hoop and backboard in our driveway.

2.  After leaving high school, Donald went to work, with his father and cousins and uncles, for his uncle Oscar Daniels' construction company.  The company did iron work construction all over the country but mostly in the midwest.  Later, probably about 1944-45, Donald went to work for his father-in-law's real estate firm M J Connery and Sons.  The business was a combination travel, insurance and real estate agency.  Donald became the resident realtor and broker.  He was also a notary and had a big metal seal that he used of emboss his seal.  I was very impressed with it.  On Thursday nights the office was open late and Don was the one to keep it open.  When he came home on Thursday nights he would bring mom the Saturday Evening Post and a pint of Butter Pecan ice cream.  Other nights he would stop at his sister Dorothy's house to see his mother and nieces and nephews.  At Dorothy's he would stand in the middle of the living room and make it rain by putting his hands in his pants pockets and pulling out his change which he would then fling into the air so he could watch all the kids scramble for the money.

3.  Donald had a great sense of humor and loved playing jokes.  Once when mom and dad were having company, dad took a mounted, stuffed angora goat that he had picked up somewhere, and placed so that it was peering in the dining room window and asked the guests to look out the window.  He also owned a beer stein that had a frog molded in the bottom of it.  Unsuspecting guests would take a drink only to see a frog sitting in the bottom of their mug.

4.  I am adding a fourth quality because my dad wouldn't be complete without adding his shear delight and love of children.  All children!  But especially his own.  Nothing made him prouder than showing off his family.  On Sunday morning you could see him absolutely beam with pride as the whole family walked down the street and marched into a whole pew for Mass.  Regretably dad died while his children were 2 years to 17 years old, so we didnt really know him as well as we would have liked.