Marlene Louise Hanson was born March 10, 1933, in Park Rapids, Minnesota. She died August 30, 2026, in Denver, Colorado.
Marlene was born to Merritt Allen Hanson and Lucille Louise Van Overschelde Hanson. After a brief move to Detroit, Michigan, the family returned to Pratt Township in Hyde County, South Dakota, her parents’ original home. She attended grade school in Highmore, SD and high school at Mount Marty High School in Yankton, SD. Upon graduation, the family moved to Pinellas Park, Florida, where she attended St. Petersburg Junior College and then the University of Florida, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree In Journalism in 1955.
After graduating from college, Marlene worked for the Special Services Division of the Department of the Army at Fort Hood, Texas, from which she then transferred to Germany. After she toured Germany, she returned to Texas and spent the next 23 years working for Pan American Airways in Dallas and Houston. Both of these jobs demanded, more accurately permitted, travel throughout the world, which she dearly loved. Marlene took her parents on many international trips. After resigning from Pan Am, she opened a typesetting business in Texas.
As Marlene’s parents aged, they moved to Texas to be near their only child. After the death of her mother, she and her father moved to Sun City, California to be near her father’s brother. Marlene lived in Sun City for 30 years. She was a lifelong member of the Catholic Church, boasting that, as an adult, she had been a member of 23 parishes. At two of them she served as children’s religious education director and four of them as parish council member. Marlene was proud to have authored a published book on the history of St. Vincent Ferrer Church in Sun City.
In 2024, Marlene moved to Denver, Colorado, to be near relatives.
Marlene will join her parents and be interred in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Highmore, South Dakota.
