Bolivia RPCV and ex-State Senator Marvin Hanson dies in Minnesota
Ex-Sen. Marvin Hanson, 60, dies
Robert Franklin, Star Tribune
Published March 2, 2004
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Marvin Hanson, a farmer and lawyer who became assistant majority leader of the Minnesota State Senate and a DFL candidate for Congress, has died at age 60.
"He was a decent, straight-up, honest guy," said former DFL Senate Majority Leader Roger Moe, who represented an adjacent district. "He never forgot where he came from, that's for sure."
Indeed, after his stint in politics, Hanson returned home to the northwestern corner of the state. He lived in Kennedy, Minn., and was found dead Sunday of an apparent heart attack. He had been feeding livestock in a barn on the Northcote farm that had been in his family for many years.
Hanson raised feeder pigs, an unusual farming practice in the Red River Valley. "He dearly loved it," said his wife, Kathryn Rynning. She recalled him talking about friends who retired out West and remarking, "Arizona will never ever come up to going to the barn and finding 13 new piglets in the morning."
"He was very gentle but very outspoken, dynamic," she said. "If he had an opinion, you would know it."
Hanson grew up in the Hallock area, graduated from the University of Minnesota and received a law degree from Columbia University. He spent two years in the Peace Corps in Bolivia, which produced "probably his fondest memories," his wife said.
He served in the Senate from 1977 through 1982.
"He was somebody that I really relied on," Moe said. "He was filled with good sense, good common sense ... a man with great talents."
Hanson chose not to run for reelection in 1982, but he was the unsuccessful DFL candidate for Congress in Minnesota's Seventh District in 1988. He received 46 percent of the vote against Republican incumbent Arlan Stangeland.
Since then, he had been "pretty much on the sidelines" of politics, Rynning said. He farmed and practiced some law, mostly in real estate, from an office in Hallock.
Hanson was a member of Red River Lutheran Church, near Hallock.
He and Rynning, the widow of a former college roommate from Hallock, married five years ago. Other survivors include two children from a previous marriage, George, of Lancaster, Minn., and Kate Hanson, of St. Paul; his father and a sister.
Funeral arrangements had not been made as of Monday.
Robert Franklin is at rfranklin@startribune.com.
