Coan Hanson

Coan Bell Hanson

Coan Hanson, a longtime resident of Redwood City, died in Sacramento after a lengthy illness on March 14. She was 86.
Widow of Dr. Melvin W. Hanson, daughter of George and Elizabeth Bell, and sister of Elizabeth, Georgia, and Ann, Coan was a native of Fayetteville, NC, and a summa cum laude graduate of the University of North Carolina and of Harvard-Radcliffe. Before her marriage in 1956, she was a high school history teacher.
Throughout her life, she was passionately interested in people and cultures around the world. She traveled extensively as a single teacher, as a homemaker with her family, and again on her own after her husband's passing in 1994, always making friends along the way. She and her husband were also very involved in their church community, Trinity Presbyterian in San Carlos, where Coan was a Sunday school teacher and participated with teenagers on house-building trips to Mexico.
A memorial service for Coan will be held at Trinity on June 26 at 1 p.m., with private interment the following day at Golden Gate National Cemetery, alongside her beloved Mel. She is survived by their children, Patricia Coan Hanson and Melvin Wesley Hanson, Jr., and by daughter-in-law Cory Hanson.
Memorial contributions are preferred to Trinity's mission fund, 1106 Alameda, San Carlos, CA 94070.