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Clyde W. Hansen
August 17, 1925 – February 25, 2021
At 95 years old, Clyde W. Hansen went to be with his Savior, Feb. 25, 2021, in Palatka, Florida. Clyde was born to Effie and Harold Hansen Sr. on Aug. 17, 1925, near Herman, Nebraska. He was predeceased by his three brothers, Harold Jr., Howard and Eugene and two sisters, Ruby and Ella Yvonne ("Bonnie").
Clyde enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve on 8/7/1943 and served in the Pacific until 3/9/1946. He was awarded a Purple Heart for wounds he received on 2/12/1944 in the battle...
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Clyde W. Hansen
August 17, 1925 – February 25, 2021
At 95 years old, Clyde W. Hansen went to be with his Savior, Feb. 25, 2021, in Palatka, Florida. Clyde was born to Effie and Harold Hansen Sr. on Aug. 17, 1925, near Herman, Nebraska. He was predeceased by his three brothers, Harold Jr., Howard and Eugene and two sisters, Ruby and Ella Yvonne ("Bonnie").
Clyde enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve on 8/7/1943 and served in the Pacific until 3/9/1946. He was awarded a Purple Heart for wounds he received on 2/12/1944 in the battle for the island of Roi-Namur in the Marshall Islands.
Returning home to Fremont, he married his sweetheart Dolores Martin in 1947. They lived for a short time in Hooper, Nebraska, and then made Fremont their long time home. They spent almost 70 years of marriage together, enjoying dances, camping, grandchildren and travel in retirement. Clyde and Dolores raised two sons, Ralph and Roger, in a Christian home.
Clyde worked for the Geo. A. Hormel Company until retirement. After retirement, he worked several years for Schweser's Clothing. He will always be known for his hard work ethic.
Later, he and Dolores moved to Crescent City, Florida, to be near their son, Roger, and family and enjoy the warmer temperatures. Dolores passed away in 2016 and Clyde lived there until the time of his death.
Clyde is survived by his two sons, Ralph C. Hansen and wife Cheryl of Lincoln, Nebraska, and Roger L. Hansen and wife Nancy of Crescent City, Florida. He is survived by 6 grandchildren, 18 great-grandchildren and 2 great-great-grandchildren.
Graveside memorial services and military funeral honors are planned for March 26 at 11 a.m. at Memorial Cemetery, Fremont, Nebraska.
Remarks for Clyde W. Hansen memorial service.
Matthew G. Hansen
Friday, March 26, 2021, 11 a.m., Memorial Cemetery, Fremont, Nebraska
"My name is Matt Hansen and Clyde W. Hansen was my grandfather.
I wanted to tell you a little bit about my grandfather as I knew him, and the transformation that took place in his life. I was born almost exactly 50 years after my grandfather was, and I was blessed to have 45 years to get to know him. Even during that span of time I saw some remarkable changes in him.
As I was thinking about the best way to try to communicate that today, the idea came to me that in many ways my grandfather was a lot like a coconut. It's OK to laugh, and I certainly don't mean any disrespect to him by saying that. But if you've ever seen a coconut, you know that the exterior is covered with a rough husk and a tough outer shell. And it takes a lot of effort to strip away that husk and get through to the inside. But when you do, you are rewarded with something that is tender and sweet. The inside is so very different from what it looks like on the outside. My grandfather was a lot like that.
As many of you know, my grandfather was a U.S. Navy veteran of the Pacific in World War II. He was badly burned in February 1944 on the tiny island of Roi-Namur in the Marshall Islands and carried the scars (both physical and emotional) from those events for the rest of his life. He would recover in time to participate in the Battle of Okinawa, the last stepping stone before an invasion of Japan itself, which, fortunately, never came before the war ended. Soon after the war, he returned home, married his sweetheart Dolores, and raised a family.
One time my grandfather told me an interesting story about how, as a young man recently out of the service with a wife and a new baby, he was working for an automotive body and fender shop and thinking that might be what he wanted to do for a career. But the automotive paint that he was spraying caused some serious health problems with his skin. He got so sick that he was physically unable to work for a time. Because he still had a job, he didn't quality for unemployment benefits (hard to believe, but true). But he couldn't work, and his family needed food. He told me how, in desperation, he had to set aside his pride and ask for help from a veterans organization in the tiny town of Hooper, Nebraska, where they were living at the time. That organization turned him away and told him to go try the American Legion. My grandfather, although a veteran, was not a member of the American Legion at the time. But he figured that he didn't have anything to lose. The gentleman at the Legion post told him to go over to the grocery store, get what he needed, sign the bill over to the account of the American Legion, and that they would take care of him. My grandfather never forgot that act of kindness in his hour of need. He later became a life member of the American Legion. In the end all of this resulted in a change in jobs, and my grandfather spent the next several decades working hard in the meatpacking industry. This work environment not only toughened his exterior, but it also contributed to the hearing loss that would be with him for the rest of his life.
So that was the grandfather that I knew as a little child: a little rough around the edges. We all remember how he could (at times) be prone to swear like the sailor he had been as a young man. But at some point he began to change. I think it was so subtle at first that I failed to take notice of it. Perhaps I first noticed it in the moments like when he would take me on his lap as a little kid and read children's books to me. At the time I had absolutely no idea that he had struggled with a lifelong learning disability that sometimes made reading and writing difficult for him. He relied heavily on my grandmother to help him cope with that. I remember that when my grandparents moved to Florida in 2010, my grandmother gave me the group of the letters she had received from my grandfather during 1945 and 1946 while he was in the Navy. As I read through the letters and transcribed them I couldn't help from thinking that they seemed pretty basic – not much information or details. Only later would my grandfather share with me how challenging it was for him to write those letters, and how he had to rely on a Webster's pocket dictionary to be able to understand some of the words that my grandmother wrote to him.
Starting in my high school years, I really made an effort to try to get to know my grandfather. I wrote him a lot of letters and asked a lot of questions. I asked him to tell me about his war experiences. It was a slow process. He was guarded, and for good reason. Many of the memories were painful and he had tried to put them out of his mind. I know he wondered on more than one occasion just what it had all been for. Slowly, little by little, just like peeling back the outside of a coconut and cracking into the shell, he began to open up to me, and I got glimpses of the person that he was inside.
I saw this tenderness in moments like the time that he sat on the couch with my daughter Meredith (who was about four years old then) sipping coffee and listening intently as she paged through one of her books and explained the finer details of the various Disney princesses to him.
In 2016, I had the opportunity to accompany my grandfather back to the tiny island of Roi-Namur in the Marshall Islands. 72 years after he had last been there as a soldier, he was invited to return (willingly this time) at the age of 91 and see the place where he had first been in 1944. That island, and a number of nearby islands in the coral atoll of Kwajalein, have remained under U.S. military control since the war and are now part of the U.S. Army's Space and Missile Defense Command. The war-torn islands he departed from in 1944 on a hospital ship have been transformed into a lush and beautiful paradise. His return arrival was marked by a hero's reception, and the whole island turned out to welcome him back – something he had not fully expected. Over the next few days he was able to share his story with eager audiences and see with his own eyes what his struggle had all been for. He was able to walk on the same beach where he had landed in 1944. He gave and received a lot of hugs from people grateful for his sacrifice and service. This whole experience healed a lot of old wounds.
Something special happened one night while we were on Roi that I haven't shared with very many people. Throughout the trip, my grandfather and I had routinely been given separate rooms. But the limited facilities on Roi found us sharing a single room with a pair of twin beds. My grandfather turned in early, like he usually did, took out his hearing aids, and laid down to sleep with his face towards the wall. I was on my bed nearby, still awake, and reading. Pretty soon I became aware of a soft conversation as my grandfather talked to God. He was praying quietly, but without his hearing aids in, I'm sure he was unaware of the volume of his voice, or that anyone could hear him. I listened in silence as he prayed for my grandmother, who although we didn't know it then, would only be with us for a few months longer. He also prayed for his family and for others, and for safe travels. It was a simple but effective prayer. That is all it needed to be. And it gave me a glimpse of where his heart was at.
Exactly the moment when my grandfather surrendered his heart to Jesus, I can't be entirely certain. Inside the cover of a small Navy-issue Gideon's pocket New Testament bible that he gave me, he had written that he trusted Christ as his Savior on February 25, 1945, aboard the U.S.S. Kenton (an attack transport ship that carried him from Pearl Harbor to the Philippines and then on the Okinawa invasion). (Interestingly, he trusted Christ as his Savior exactly 76 years TO THE DAY before he passed away on 2/25/2021). Maybe that was the moment; I certainly have no reason to question it. But regardless of when it happened, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it did happen. Towards the end of his life he was a different man from the one he had been. Some might have still seen a rough exterior as he aged (and his difficulty hearing certainly didn't help that) but once you got to really know him, what you found inside was someone with a kind, generous, and compassionate heart. He had faced death on many occasions throughout his life, but in the end he faced death without fear because he knew that Jesus Christ had paid the penalty for his sin. My grandfather understood that a new and glorious life, for all eternity, was waiting for him, and he could hardly wait to get there. He would have a new body and be back again with the wife he loved so much. So while we miss his presence here, we know that he is truly more alive now than he has ever been before. And that is something for us to celebrate rather than to mourn.
So I want to leave today with a question: What will YOU do with Jesus? My grandfather believed that Jesus was who He claimed to be: his Savior and the Lord of his life, and he fully surrendered his heart to Him. Are you willing to do the same? Nobody gets to make that decision for us, we each have to make it for ourselves. You can know for certain before you go to sleep tonight where you will spend eternity. Don't let the sun go down without settling that question. You've got today, but tomorrow isn't promised.
My grandfather never told me if he had a favorite bible verse, but I would like to think that it might have been John 3:16. It's a simple verse but it tells you all that you really need to know: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son; that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life."
That was the Clyde W. Hansen that I got to know. That was my grandfather." |
