Robert Con Hanger

(Writer's note: I've had the idea for some time to write my obituary in first person and have my survivors bring it up to date as necessary. I prefer my style to the standard death notice. At any rate, whether or not to use it won't be my decision.) (Editors' note: Dad, we think that's a heck of an idea. Let's run it.)

I died at the age of 87 on Tuesday, February 3, at Kansas City Hospice House. The cause was cancer.

I was born in St. Louis on August 4, 1921, the only child of Charles Robert and Elsie Fay (Riley) Hanger. My father, who had a law degree and won many medals in World War I, moved the family to Kansas City when I was 3 to buy an interest in a wholesale dairy owned by a cousin.

I grew up in Kansas City, attending Troost Grade School, Paseo High School and Kansas City Junior College before completing a journalism degree at the University of Missouri, where I was a member of Phi Delta Theta. I graduated from MU in June 1942 and enlisted in the Marine Corps as an officer candidate.

I spent most of the next three years in service in World War II, 28 months of it in the Pacific theater as an artilleryman in the Second Marine Division. I saw combat in assault landings at Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian and Okinawa, all without getting a scratch. After a short tour in the occupation of Japan, I returned home in time for the Missouri-Kansas football game in Kansas City in November 1945. (Old Mizzou, starring a big, draft-exempt boy named Jim Kekeris, won. You can look it up.)

For the next 40 years or so, I was mostly in the advertising business, after spending four years with Sears and discovering that I didn't like retailing. I was a pretty good writer and a better-than-average advertising executive as a partner in Jones & Hanger, which I co-founded with Frank Jones; an officer in Brewer advertising, later a division of Young & Rubicam; and executive director of marketing with Farmland Industries.

I was a voracious reader, an avid golfer and a longtime member of Blue Hills Country Club. I was married twice, fathering four children. Two boys with my first wife, Patricia Francis Hartnett, and a boy and a girl with my second wife, Mary Patricia Crowe. I led a good and interesting life, and I'm sorry to leave it. However, I depart with a clear conscience because I have such faith in those I leave behind.

The most important of these, of course, is my wonderful wife of nearly 40 years, Mary Pat, natural mother of my last two children and virtual mother of my first two.

And now for the kids, proceeding in order of appearance to avoid favoritism. They are: Con Riley Hanger of Bandera, Texas, husband of Monica Hanger; Paul Robert Hanger of Leawood, Kan., husband of Suzanne Hanger; Nancy Fay Davis of Columbia, S.C., wife of Kelly Davis; Charles Martin Hanger of Brooklyn, N.Y., husband of Becky Hanger. I also leave behind nine grandchildren, Hilary, Jody, Max, Millie, Gus, Patty, Katie, Amelie and Sam.

So long.

On Friday, a 9 a.m. visitation will be followed by a 10:30 Mass of Christian Burial at Visitation Church, 5141 Main Street in Kansas City, Mo. Interment will be at Calvary Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, donations can be sent to a charity of your choice or to Kansas City Hospice at 9221 Ward Parkway, Suite 100, Kansas City, MO, 64114. (Arr.: Muehlebach Funeral Home, 816-444-2060, online at www.muehlebachchapel.com.)