From the Winter 2010 issue of Relationships magazine.
Thoreau wrote,“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Leonard Hansen was not one of these men, however, having lived life to the fullest. His life’s journey took him across the skies over Europe and through the dark of night in Czechoslovakia. He intersected with Young Life in the San Joaquin Valley in 1951 after his wife Elizabeth accepted an old friend’s invitation to check out club in Southern California.
Inspired, Hansen returned home from that club intent on adapting Young Life’s method to reach teens in his local church. He attended leadership training in Colorado later that year, and asked Jim Rayburn when he could expect to see Young Life in San Joaquin. Rayburn answered, “You start it!”
Hansen knew the exciting and dangerous implications of serving something greater than himself. He had co-piloted a B-17 in World War II. On his fourth mission, his plane took enemy fire. Hansen managed to land the plane, saving the lives of his crew, and spent two years as a German POW.
He returned home in 1945, where he was awarded the Purple Heart. He married Elizabeth, finished college, and settled in as a cattle rancher while teaching Sunday school at his local church. Hansen had not shared real contact with teens since he graduated high school.
Tulare County welcomed its first Young Life club at Woodlake High School in the fall of 1952. Hanson had never led anyone in singing, claiming he couldn’t carry a tune himself. But Hansen believed in reaching every kid with the message of Christ. He dove into the lives of kids, even enjoying a stint calling games for the high school football team.
Hansen led club at Woodlake for 20 years. His service to the San Joaquin Valley continued as a Rotarian and school board member for three area counties. He and Elizabeth later enjoyed traveling overseas to visit the missionaries they supported. In 1987, refusing to lay down their audacity, the couple breached the Iron Curtain to deliver Bibles in the middle of the night to workers serving in Czechoslovakia.
Hansen often encouraged other adults fearful of working with teens to step up to the challenge. “I believe it is a basic fear most laymen have that they can never measure up to the standards of the ‘professional’ Young Life leader,” Hansen once wrote in Young Life Magazine. “I have news for you. You don’t have to!” He believed in only one requirement: “You have to be concerned that every teenager in America be given the opportunity to hear the claims of Christ.”
Leonard Hansen passed away on July 29, the sunset of a remarkable life lived in service to his community, and its youth, and dedicated to emulating the one hero he truly admired — Jesus Christ.