WILMINGTON — Mary Kathleen Lane Hansen, 93, stepped into heaven Wednesday, April 17, 2019, from Lower Cape Fear Hospice, Wilmington. She was a loving, faithful, gentle, Christian woman.
Born May 16, 1925, on a lush green farm in the middle of Indiana, she was the daughter of Earl S. Lane and Edith Duff and stepdaughter of Mabel Ruth Graham. Kathleen Hansen said about her home that “looking out the south kitchen window there by the sink, it was our land as far as we could see.”
At age five, she lost her mother and gained a baby brother. At the bedside of her mother, her father promised “to get little Kathleen piano lessons,” which honored the family’s musical legacy, which continued through her daughters, Beverly Andrews (concertmaster Wilmington Symphony) and Jennifer Hansen (deceased 2017) and many of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
In high school, she rode her pony to neighboring farms and taught children piano lessons. As a young mother, she put a pink piano in the kitchen, where she supervised her daughters’ daily practice. She ice skated on the flooded golf courses of Midland Michigan, where her husband of 63 years (Robert Hansen, deceased 2009) was a chemical engineer at Dow. His job took them to live in Zurich, Switzerland, where she skied the Alps and negotiated in German.
She always wanted to tell people about the joy she had found in being a Christian so she initiated and led Bible studies in every neighborhood she ever lived in. She attended Purdue during World War II, was president of her sorority Pi Beta Phi and married a Navy man. She and Bob took their entire family to Israel for their 50th anniversary to show the grandchildren that the places in the Bible were real.
In 2007 she moved to Wilmington to live closer to two of her daughters. At age 82, she made new friends, attended every single Wilmington Symphony concert and left an imprint of beauty in her new town. Kathleen was always a lady, but the kind who loved to laugh. Her greatest joy was gathering family every summer to enjoy time together, to swim in cold Lake Michigan waters and to serve homemade blueberry pie.
Kathleen will be missed by her two daughters, Beverly Andrews of Wilmington and Susan McIntosh, and her husband, Lawrence, of San Diego. She is survived by eight grandchildren, Matthew and Alana Andrews, and great-grandsons, Griffin and Webber of Newport Beach, California, Caitlin Andrews, Powell and Aurelius of Carolina Beach, Elizabeth Andrews of Kure Beach, Sarah Welle, and her husband, James, Isaac and Florence of Longmont, Colorado, James Van Erck, and his wife, Kate, William of San Diego, California, John Robert Erck, and his wife, Jessica, Mia Rose of Maui, Hawaii, Lane McIntosh of Palo Alto, California, and Emma Jane McIntosh of Cardiff, California; and three nieces and two nephews.
Graveside services will be held Easter Sunday, April 21, in Lebanon, Indiana.
Memorial gifts, in lieu of flowers, may be sent to Wilmington Symphony, 5032 Randall Parkway, Wilmington, NC 28403; or First Presbyterian Church, 125 S. 3rd St., Wilmington, NC 28401.
Share online condolences with the family at Andrews Mortuary & Crematory.
