By Michael Gibbs
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE
Jerry Hansen
was six years old when the new family moved into the house next door. "My mother told me to go over there with a toy, sit there and wait for the new people. She thought perhaps the new family would have a boy my age and I would have a new friend."
Instead, Hansen got his first glimpse of then five year-old Alice. "When the new people pulled up, the car door opened and out stepped this skinny-legged little girl with glasses. I asked her if she had a brother, and she told me she didn’t. That was the end of one thing and the beginning of another."
Best friends become high school sweethearts
The two quickly became best friends, walking to school together and hanging out afterward. In fact, Hansen began to think of Alice as a little sister, but all of that began to change in his senior year of high school.
Hansen was a top player on the Lake Forest High football team and Alice a cheerleader. "One day during a time out, I was sitting there listening to the coach when the cheerleaders did a cheer in front of us. I looked up and there was Alice," Hansen recalls. "All of the sudden, for some reason, I said to myself ‘she’s not my sister.’ "
The next night, Hansen got up enough nerve to ask her out on a date. He still recalls her exact words. "She said, ‘Oh, you finally asked me.’ I asked her what she meant and she said, ‘I’ve had a crush on you since fourth grade.’ "
First move in 56 years
When the couple married, they moved into the
house where Jerry Hansen grew up, his parents having left to care for a family member. With the exception of his four-year hitch in the Navy, the couple lived there ever since.
"In these days of people moving around so much, or getting divorced, to have lived with each other in the same place for so long with the same friends is special and odd," Alice Hansen says.