Amanda
Oral History Project
Donald Thomas Hansen
Constantly on the move and ready for any challenge that may come his way, that
is Donald Thomas Hansen. He consistently strives to do his best, whether he is working
at his job or enjoying one of his many activities that fill his spare time. He is a member of
the Elks Lodge and spends many hours there perfecting his handball game, a real passion
of his. He also spends time with his pampered pooch “Drummond,” an English bulldog
that weighs over one hundred pounds.
Organization is a key part of his life, with spouses and children, homes and yards
to keep up, plus a very long workday that he always strives to reach perfection at which,
in the end, makes a very structured person. In today‟s society, he would very much likely
be a little on the obsessive compulsive side. In his mind, everything has a place where it
belongs so there is no reason for something to be out of that particular place. His
overwhelming curiosity compels him to travel to intriguing and lively places like Ireland,
Sweden, and Australia; or anywhere he can experience Disneyland, his favorite place that
satisfies his sense of adventure.
Friendly eyes and a comforting grin greet everyone at first glance. His aging gray
hair and full beard may fool some at first, but he is a young boy with a passion for trains.
His photo books and home movies depict a basement built to accommodate towns with
landscapes of mountains and rivers with trestles. There, one is able to step into a feeling
of yesteryear, meaning the controls that operate all the trains and signals can actually be
worked by a person. Don was attracted to Disneyland when it was new and he was very
young. He loves all the rides, new and old built there, and continuously visits all the
attractions. He took his children there when they were babies to share the joyous feeling
of fun and excitement that Disneyland holds for all who visit it and enter through its
gates, and visits the park a couple times a year to relive the magic.
His gentle voice tells of the vast amount of knowledge he carries with him and
enlightens others with. His role as a parent, husband, friend, uncle, brother, son, and
many other roles he has led have given him so many opportunities to learn and gather
knowledge. After his mother had a stroke and was partially paralyzed, he would go next
door every day and listen to all the stories she told. After she passed away, his stepfather,
who raised him, and his biological father moved in next door to him and every chance he
has he cares for them by doing simple chores and ensuring their safety. Don and his
current wife, Wilma, enjoy many meals out together with the “Grandpas” at their favorite
place, an Indian casino near their homes that always has very special buffets on holidays.
His devotion, persistence, and unrelenting admiration in life and in the things he
does has given him the opportunity to enjoy and take part in the most lively experiences,
capture tender and loving memories with friends and family, and lead a successful career
he has had ever since he was a young adult that he looks forward to everyday.
While Don was growing up, he had the opportunity to play with children his age
in the different neighborhoods that he lived in. As he was the oldest child in his family,
Don‟s two youngest brothers sometimes tried to tag along with him and his friends.
Although he didn‟t want to be mean to them and tell them to leave him alone, Don
explains that his brothers were not the best companions to play with. “Well with the little
one, he was too young and I didn‟t want him playing with me; he was just too young. The
other one, he was just ok, but he was sort of a pest, and he always tried to interfere when
he was probably too young to play with too. I didn‟t want him around my friends, but
they were ok,” Don recalls.
With almost every group of siblings, quibbling and disagreements often arise
between them. Don remembers similar disagreements he had between him and his
younger brothers. “I can tell you when we didn‟t get along. I remember one time I think
I‟d sent away for a Captain Marvel Spaceship that you had to cut out and you had to put
it together. I remember in our dining room I had – I couldn‟t have been more than six or
seven, eight years old, maybe nine. My brother couldn‟t have been more than three. And
I flew the spaceship and it landed in the chandelier in the dining room, and I went to get a
chair so I could knock it down. I knocked it down, took the chair back and by the time I
got back he had crumpled it all up. That was not a memorable thing but I almost killed
him for it,” Don chuckles.
As Don reflects back on this particular event, he remembers, “It wasn‟t a toy at
all, it was something that was supposed to be honored, it was supposed to sit up at my
desk, and it was something I had to send away for and it took weeks back in those days to
send away for that kind of stuff. It probably cost me a quarter but I did send away for it
and got it, put it together, and he destroyed it and I was not happy. In those days I didn‟t
care if anybody touched my stuff, but I didn‟t want him to destroy my Captain Marvel
Spaceship. That was different; it was brand new, first maiden flight, and he destroyed it.”
When one of his brothers was a couple years older, Don remembers that “Once
my brother was not happy with me and my friend, Sonny Raider, and I remember – this is
not a fun thing – that he came out and threw a pitchfork at Sonny‟s bike and hit the
wheels of it.” He adds, “That was something.”
Not all memories between Don and his brothers resulted in disagreements. He
remembers a time when he found out a secret his brother had yet to tell anyone about.
“Another time my brother was shooting a BB gun, and of course, you always remember
the story „You‟re going to put your eye out,‟ but in fact, he was actually blind in one eye;
so instead of aiming with his right eye, he was aiming with his left eye. So I discovered
that he was blind in his right eye and he had never told anybody about it.” After that
discovery, his mother and father learned that Don‟s younger brother had hurt his eye
while jumping on his bed when he wasn‟t supposed to and fell on a bed post.
As he and his brothers got older they began to get closer, but by then, Don was in
the middle of his teen years and was interested in sports and hanging out with larger
groups of friends. During his high school days at Stadium High in Tacoma, Washington,
Don played baseball, basketball, and football, so his busy schedule kept him active and
involved. Unlike other children his age, Don stayed out of trouble and recalls that he
didn‟t have any problems with the police because he never stole anything or strayed far
from the law.
When looking back on the rules set down in his house by his parents, Don recites
one his mother had for him. “The only thing my mother required of me was that I let her
know where I was going to be and what I was going to be doing. Probably when I was
young I might have gotten into a little bit of trouble doing things I wasn‟t supposed to do
from time to time but I learned quickly that that was not the thing to do and you were
going to get punished for it.”
Don remembers one event in which his mother kept him from attending a weekly
teenage activity that Don and all his friends participate in. “I remember one time we used
to go to movies every Saturday and that was a commonplace because there used to be a
series, whether it was Batman, Superman, or whatever it was in those early days in the
fifties. I remember one time I did something – I lied to my mother and she caught me and
didn‟t let me go to the movies and that was the first time probably in years that I hadn‟t
been able to go to a Saturday movie. I thought certainly that she was going to let me go
but she held tight and I did not go,” he says. As Don looks back on that memory he says,
“I still remember the name of the movie and it had to be over fifty-five years ago,
probably under sixty, in that area somewhere. It was Son of Lassie, and I still remember
that stupid movie and I didn‟t get to go.” He never did get to see the movie he was
planning on seeing with his friends that night, but he mentions with a grin, “It‟s probably
not even in print or I‟d get it just to have it.”
There is a time that Don does remember when he did get in a bit of trouble. “I‟ll
tell you one thing we did do. One time Harry S. Truman came to town and he was
speaking at the Tacoma Armory, and we went in and we stole some wine from the store
that was right across the street. There was about eight or nine of us and this one kid got so
drunk drinking this stupid wine. We finally had to take him down to the Boy‟s Club to try
to sober him up, but we couldn‟t do it. Now the rest of us didn‟t drink any but he wanted
to drink this wine and I remember we just sort of dumped him on his porch – he lived
with his grandmother. The next morning I came downstairs and my mother was sitting
there stony-faced and wanted to know what I was doing the night before. I told her the
whole story truthfully and as a result she ended up not being too mad at me. I didn‟t get
in any trouble for it really but I certainly got chewed out a little bit for leaving the boy
when he was still drunk on the porch without helping him into his house. That was
probably one of the only really bad things,” Don recalls.
Overall, Don stayed out of trouble both with his parents and the police, with the
exception of the wine adventure he and a group of others went on. As a result, he has
been successful in his life and is glad he didn‟t do anything as a child to possibly frustrate
his parents or damage his future career. But persistence has always been apparent
throughout Don‟s life. His dreams and goals have kept him striving to reach his full
potential and to provide the finest care for his family today. Although his goals have
changed and new ones have been formed, they have only done so because Don reaches
and exceeds his older ones he set for himself.
The devotion he shows toward ensuring his children are healthy and content has
always been of high priority. “One time Debbie got very sick and almost died so we were
quite worried. Finally we went to a doctor who understood what the problem was; she
had the Croup and she was dehydrated badly. In those days the medical profession wasn‟t
as it is today and the doctor, Doctor Tambura was his name, he diagnosed her and
checked her into Mary Bridge Hospital in Tacoma, Washington, and took very good care
of her until she was well again,” Don remembers.
He has always made it a goal to be there for his children or anyone else in his
family when they need guidance or encouragement. Don says, “The best thing anybody
can do is to give advice.” When his three daughters were at a young age, Don divorced
his first wife which then left him unable to spend as much quality time as he normally
could have had with them. He explains, “I did get a divorce and when you didn‟t have the
ability to be around the children all the time, you were sometimes limited to what you
could either have them do or not do.” Regardless of the situation Don was in, he still tried
to find and spend as much time as he possibly could with his children. He adds, “I guess,
when you‟re a parent, the best thing you can is make sure that they do the right thing; that
they have the chance and opportunity for growing up and living in the future the best way
they can. Again, I didn‟t have all of that ability when I was divorced but I did the best I
could.”
Don believes that a strong work ethic is important to hold in life and continues to
work today, feeling lucky that he has a job that he loves to do everyday. Don‟s intention
is to work until he is no longer able to do so and has no plans to retire in the near future.
Along with working, Don also looks forward to doing the things that mean the most to
him, like traveling to places he has yet to travel to, like Spain and some parts of Europe,
and spending more quality time with his growing family of grandchildren.
From the time he was fourteen until the time when he reached the age of
seventeen, Don continued to go to high school until he graduated. During that time he
received his driver‟s license at the age of fifteen and bought his first car. At the age of
seventeen, Don started working steady jobs that have taken him from Hawaii where he
completed missions given to him in the Marine Corp., to driving a bus for the city of
Tacoma, and finally to his latest career of working as an International Officer of the
Amalgamated Union.
When Don first joined the Marine Corp., he was transferred to the Hawaiian
Islands where he was given temporary duty assignments. He then returned to Tacoma,
Washington, where he met his first wife Dale and soon married her in 1956, while at the
same time, Don started working at Boeing Aircraft. After traveling around with his new
wife, they decided to move to La Jolla, California, where they lived for a couple of years.
“Actually what had happened was Dale became pregnant and we decided that we‟d move
back to Tacoma. We did that and we came back I think in August of 1958, and that‟s
when I started my career that I‟m basically on now. Then Denise was born December of
that year,” Don clarifies.
While his wife was pregnant with their second daughter, Don recalls, “At the time
she was born, I applied to be a bus driver in September 1958, and I started driving for the
city of Tacoma buses and at the time that the second was born, I was still driving buses
and I was also working for the union that represented the employees at that particular
facility.
“When I first started, my main responsibility was, as one of the General Officers
as a Recorded Secretary of the Local, was to make sure that all of the proceedings and
stuff were in order so that I would be able to hand them over to meetings and things like
that.”
Don and his first wife divorced a couple of years after the birth of their third
daughter. He says, “I would say probably, maybe we both married too young. However, I
think that maybe a lot of it was because of the kind of work that I was doing. It may have
had some reason for possibly us just sort of drifting apart because I worked an awful lot.”
Don met his second wife Dorothy through mutual friends and married her two
years after divorcing his first wife. During his marriage to Dorothy, Don‟s first son,
Daniel, was born on December 3, 1970. He says, “It was just completely different
because I didn‟t know I was going to have a kid. But when he was born, the same kind of
instincts took over. You want to try to do the very best you can for him and you do what
you can.” When asked whether it was different with Daniel because he was Don‟s first
son, Don replied, “Children didn‟t make much difference; they could be girls or boys.
They were just children and they were my children, that was all.”
Don‟s second marriage ended in a divorce ten years later. Afterwards, Don
explains, “Then I married a third time, to Wilma. I‟ve been married to her for twenty-five
years and we met in Tenino, Washington, where I was living at the time.” Don shares his
thoughts he had about marrying for a third time and says, “I was hesitant, I can admit that
I was hesitant to get married but I did anyways. I can only tell you the old adage in this –
you can make it into a joke – but if you don‟t succeed at first then you try, try again.
Three‟s always a magic charm so maybe that was it, I don‟t have a clue.” He continues,
“It wasn‟t the same as the first two. It wasn‟t the same as the first one; they all were
different, each with different occasions and situations.”
During that same time, Don explains what path his career was taking. “As my
time as a Union Officer became longer, I became hen an Executive Board Officer and
also the Financial Secretary of the Business Agent, the president and then moved on to
the International Officer about twenty years ago, around 1987.”
Don mentions that although his job can be stressful sometimes, it still has given
him a satisfying career over the years. “I think it‟s a good job and it helps people. I can‟t
bring myself at this point to actually call it quits and retire. I continue to work even at my
age now.”
Throughout the years, Don has stayed dedicated to giving his job the best effort
he can. His accomplishments in his career and raising his children are proof of how hard
Don has pursued the goals he set for himself in his life. The worries usually shared by
many people about whether or not they will have medical benefits or a steady job they
enjoy are diminished because of how hard he has worked. There is only one worry left
that Don has and he concludes by saying, “The only thing you have to worry about when
you get older is how to keep yourself in good shape.”
As Don raised his children, he was able to share many memories with them both
individually and as a family all together. Don has always had a love for Disneyland in his
heart and admits that it is one of his favorite places to visit. He visited the theme park
once when it first opened and decided later to take his first wife and their three daughters
to visit the magic that Disneyland holds still today for many individuals.
“I would say one of the memorable times we had as a family would be before I
was divorced. We took a trip to Disneyland that I have a few movies of. I remember we
stayed in a motel next to the park and it was pretty fun. I would think it was about 1961
when we went,” recalls Don. “It was just a fun place to go; it was something different
that not everybody had a chance to go to Disneyland in that day and age. I had been there
once before they were born and now I had the chance to take them for their first time and
I was glad to go back myself.” He adds, “It was just a fun trip when we were all together.
I have some home movies of the girls on different rides and strolling around the park with
their Mickey Mouse ears on. The weather was so nice that we used the hotel pool
everyday.”
Don also took interest in one of the hobbies his son, Daniel, had as a child. He
explains, “We probably had some memorable times because as a young person he started
racing motorcycles and so we traveled to Las Vegas and a few other places to be able to
race. He had a good time and I had a good time so it was fun for both of us.” Don is also
glad to share memories with his children and his grandchildren. “We‟ve had the
opportunities; our latest was attending a race with his son and daughter. It was a fun time
and so that was memorable,” he says.
Don enjoys telling stories of past experiences he has shared with his children and
feels fortunate to have been able to have the memories he has with his children. Whether
at family gatherings or over dinner, he never seems to run out of amusing, sometimes
embarrassing, yet captivating stories to tell others.
He has always kept a set of beliefs and values that he considers significant to his
life. Diversity and immigration has never been a problem for Don as he loved in many
ethnic neighborhoods while growing up. He remembers, “That‟s when a lot of
immigrants were here, in the thirties and forties, and whether you were Vietnamese,
Korean, or Chinese, the different groups took care of each other in those days.” He adds,
“That‟s what America was founded on is immigration.”
Don‟s job also allows him to accept diversity and value it. “In my profession, it‟s
fairly diversified, I work with a lot of folks that come from all sorts of backgrounds and
different countries, different colors, and so it‟s not really been that big of an issue for
me,” says Don.
The ability to achieve things once thought of as impossible through the
advancement of technology has always been important to Don‟s life. It has enabled him
to learn much more than he ever imagined he could and allowed him to perform his job in
an efficient manner. Ironically, Don‟s Catholic grade school teacher told him when he
was younger that they would never be able to get off of Earth and to the moon because if
you died then your soul would have no place to go, yet technology advancements allowed
a handful of people to do so in 1969. Don adds that, “It‟s exciting to see all of this stuff
happening in my particular lifetime, and from the time that I was young it started to take
off after the second world war and it‟s been exciting each and every year.”
Spending quality time with family and communication with them is also
meaningful to Don as he explains, “When I was young, we always used to go to a house
like a grandmother; they used to be the chief person or so to speak.” Although not many
family gatherings occur as much because of busy schedules, Don still tries to see his ever
growing family as much as he can. He says, “At this point in my life I visit, see people,
but there‟s not a lot of real get-togethers anymore.” Don adds, “Now if I think about it
and I had to go back and had a chance to do something over again, which you can‟t do, I
probably would have called my mother more as I was growing up and traveling. Your
mother always wants to hear from you so it‟s always good to give her a call no matter
what and let her know how you‟re doing.”
These beliefs and values Don maintains are all important to his life, each in its
own separate way. Whether he is respecting others and their culture, benefiting from the
growth of technology, or simply enjoying the company of his loving family, Don is
always following principles which have continually strengthened everyday through his
life experiences and acquired knowledge.
For many individuals, they hold a passion that they have followed since
childhood. The same is true for Don Hansen. Ever since he was young, he has held an
insatiable appetite for trains and all that surrounds them. The question of when Don‟s
infatuation began with trains is answered as he mentions, “I‟ve only seen Franklin
Deleanor Roosevelt once when I was a little boy and my mother put it in my baby book
that we went down to the train to see Franklin Deleanor Roosevelt.”
When Don was asked what first made him interested in trains, he replied, “I don‟t
know but when I was little I used to always watch the trains go by and I just told you
earlier that I went down to see the train with Franklin Deleanor Roosevelt. I used to
always watch the trains and I used to hear them at nighttime, steam engines and stuff like
that. It was just sort of a thing that fascinated me in my younger years.”
“He has a whole basement full!” Debbie, Don‟s youngest daughter, exclaims
regarding Don‟s collection of trains.
“I do have a collection of them,” Don says. “I have age-old trains that you can put
together in a basement or in a garage which I do have set up in the garage for my trains.
The oldest train I have I think is one my mother gave me and it was just a little steam
engine. I don‟t remember when she gave it to me or whatever but I do have it. A lot of
other trains I‟ve had have disappeared but they were different kinds of trains, not just the
regular electric. Some of them were wind-up and some of them were electric, but they
were different, completely different than what I have at this point.”
Today, Don still holds the same fascination he has for trains. He says, “I watch
them coming in. I sometimes have meetings down at the station in Longview,
Washington, and right at the train station we‟ll meet. I‟ll watch and wait for the trains to
go by; I know the schedule so I know when they‟re coming.” Although some of his trains
have gone missing over the years, he continues to add to his collection and hold steady
his passion from his childhood.
His parents have played a very influential role in Don‟s life by helping him stay
out of trouble when he was younger and helping instill the strong values and principles he
has in his life today. Don‟s mother provided a sense of comfort and love, while his father
offered him security and a strong work ethic to look up to and follow.
Don remembers while growing up that he wasn‟t all that close with his father but
explains, “I‟m more closely aligned with him now because he‟s an older person and lives
right next door to me and I go over and visit with him and my stepfather; they both live
next door and I visit both each night, take them the paper, and we chat about old times
and new times, pains and aches, and other things like that.”
Don reveals that he and his mother had a stronger relationship between them than
the one he had with his father and remembers, “My mother I was fairly close to.” Fairly
recently Don‟s mother passed away, and he still remembers what he was doing at the
time he found out his mother was doing worse. He recalls, “She passed away eleven
years ago. It was very traumatic for me. I was in California and had to fly back because I
was working at the time. I got back probably an hour before she passed away in the
hospital.” He explains, “She had to have some operations, she had smoked which she
shouldn‟t of done. She had lost a lung and had some cancer as a result, along with some
other medical problems. But she lived a fairly good life before she passed away.”
Looking back now on his childhood and relationship with his mother, Don
mentions, “I have one thing I always tell people if they ask and that is if there was
anything else I could have done differently when I was young, I think that when I was
traveling and starting to live my own life, that I probably should have called my mother a
little bit more only because I really didn‟t know and I really didn‟t care back then; I was
doing things that I wanted to do, but now as a parent, I understand that I really would
have liked to of heard from her. So I think that if I had a chance to go back and do it over
again, I think that I would have called a little bit more and said „Hi, how are you doing?‟
I think she would have liked that.”
In his life, Don has been able to witness the end of the Great Depression, the
beginning of the Second World War, and the evolution of the technological era. He is
constantly in awe over what people have been able to accomplish and says, “Technology
is taking place more and more frequently, making things better and making life more
exciting. When I was young, my excitement was trying to find a radio station on an AM
radio from California. We just didn‟t have anything else like televisions until later. If I
had even thought of it, I would have brought this list that I have which shows that I‟m
born before probably sixty or seventy things that are on the list that people now take for
granted; but they weren‟t even available or had been invented at the time I was born. So
when you look at that list you think „Holy moley,‟ because a lot of things have happened
over these last forty or fifty years.” He continues, “Now I go in my house and there‟s all
these flashing lights going off at night from the clocks, computers, and televisions. That
was never the case back then.”
Don is pleased with his life and looks forward to working at his job as long as he
is able to before retiring and traveling to different places, whether it is to one of his
favorite places like Disneyland, or to a whole other city and country, like Cabo San
Lucas, Mexico. He hopes to travel to many countries he has yet to visit in his lifetime
with his current wife, Wilma, by his side. Also, he plans on visiting and spending more
time with his ever-growing family that has been blended together through blissful
marriages and future generations of children.