BOMBER MEMORIAL

CAROLYN RUTH McVICKER HANSON ~ Class of 1972
May 3, 1954 - February 1, 2023



Carolyn Ruth McVicker Hanson, 68, a resident of Pacific City, OR, died on February 1, 2023 at the Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland, OR. Carolyn was born on May 3, 1954 in Pasadena, CA. She was the first of four children born to Donovan Earl McVicker and Arvada Louise (Swain) McVicker. Carolyn was raised throughout western and eastern Washington, as her father’s United Methodist preaching led the family periodically to various new towns and cities, ultimately landing for his longest and last calling in Richland.

Carolyn was one of the eldest of her extended family’s cousins, and she and her siblings got together with them all as often as they could. Berry picking near Forest Grove, OR under the careful and joyous supervision of her Aunt Mary was a formative experience for them, leading to lifelong friendships, productive picking techniques, and a keen fondness for the very best berries that could be found and picked clean (never cherry-picked). Fourth of July family reunions at Aunt Margaret’s and Uncle Ned’s home in Hood River, OR, with swimming and food and fireworks were must-attend annual events for all the aunts, uncles, and cousins, as were extended Thanksgiving retreats to various scenic, bunk-bed equipped venues in Washington and Oregon. She loved hearing Aunt Margaret and her Uncle Raleigh McVicker play four-handed piano pieces as the family listened, sang, and cheered, often with football (or Scrabble) games playing on the TV (or card tables) in the background, and she loved the potluck food that everyone brought and cooked to satisfy the throng. And one year they wondered whether D.B. Cooper might just possibly have landed somewhere nearby.

As a tall, beautiful teenage girl, and a big fan of tall, handsome teenage boys, Carolyn was a devotee of the Richland basketball teams, a passion that she shared with her father. She helped track scoring in each home game and attended as many road and tournament games as possible around Washington state. Carolyn worked as a grocery cashier in Richland, frequently on the same shift as her brother, David, during which they together amazed numerous customers with her smooth over-the-shoulder tosses and his deft catches of flight-tolerant grocery products that she rung up and he bagged. She enjoyed cool and wet inner-tube raft trips on hot days with her best friend, Jami Regimbal Montgomery, on the Columbia River, and together they masterminded various ingenious plots to help the high school teachers learn how to handle such creative and adventurous kids as themselves. She graduated from Columbia High School (now Richland High School) as an outstanding member of the Class of 1972.

Carolyn combined various work opportunities with her post-secondary schooling. She was employed on both construction and control room operator shifts at Hanford, the latter with the red phone to the U.S. President always within easy reach. She attended various colleges, including Jamestown University (in Jamestown, ND) and Seattle University (in Seattle), where she earned a Bachelor of Science in Nursing as well as a Bachelor of Arts, both in 1980.

She started her nursing career in obstetrics at Northwest Hospital in Seattle, where she helped deliver approximately ten thousand babies and helped their mothers and fathers get through the unique circumstances of each birth process. She was also a huge advocate for her colleagues and their patients, helping families by founding the 364-BABY hotline to continue providing solid support after maternity discharge, and by helping other hospitals around the U.S. through her consulting work on how to duplicate its success.

Perhaps Carolyn’s finest gift was being able to listen to and help others gain clarity about what they were saying, more specifically about what they really wanted and what they dreamed about. When confronted with problems of any type and size, she ceaselessly put together the possibilities in her mind and shared the most appropriate ones as possible ideas for the other to consider, which were as often as not taken as the adopted solution. She never gave up on finding good solutions to obvious and non-obvious problems, and this trait as well as her lifelong drive to help people led to her consulting work, first with related family-owned businesses (many cloth diaper services around the U.S.), and eventually with many other private and public businesses, non-profits, and governmental agencies. Her own business, McVicker & Associates, provided a range of services, from organizational development to conflict resolution, with just about everything in between.

Carolyn lived for years in an apartment building on Capitol Hill in Seattle in which she eventually took on the added role of apartment complex manager. It was while she was living there that she met her future husband, Gary Hanson, who was then working as a telecommunications software engineer in San Jose, CA. Never looking back, Carolyn and Gary were engaged three months later and married three months after that, in a serenely scenic outdoor ceremony in Discovery Park overlooking the Puget Sound, accompanied by a string quartet and trumpet, family, and friends. They enjoyed a honeymoon in Newport, OR at the wonderful Sylvia Beach Hotel and travelled back there for longer wedding anniversary vacations for many years.

They lived together until December, 1989 in Palo Alto, CA, during which time Carolyn started her Master's program at Santa Clara University in San Jose, CA. The devastating Loma Prieta earthquake that October, just before the start of the third game of the World Series (improbably between the Oakland Athletics and the San Francisco Giants), made them seek new (and thus far, less shaky) habitat in northeast Portland, OR. Carolyn continued to complete her Master of Arts in Counseling degree in 1990 after a series of additional commuting trips to California.

Always wondering whether mountains or the ocean would become their bigger attraction, a series of close friendships and mutual caring for a nearby neighbor led to an opportunity in 1996 to share ownership in a “Cozy Cottage” in Shorepine Village in Pacific City, OR, a rural, unincorporated town (despite its name) just off Three Capes Scenic Loop (west of U.S. 101) between Tillamook and Neskowin, and just behind a foredune along a wonderful Pacific Ocean beach facing the large Haystack Rock located just south of the graceful Cape Kiwanda.

Once enjoying alternate weekends and equally-relaxed neighbors there, Carolyn and Gary settled on (and in) “The land of cheese, trees, and ocean breeze” as their preferred habitat and bought a large lot in Nestucca Ridge overlooking both the Nestucca Spit and the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Big Nestucca River to the east. Pondering the design possibilities for six years, they sold their Portland, OR home in 2003 and lived in the Orenco Station area of Hillsboro, OR for a year while building their home. They lived together in Pacific City, from 2004 to Carolyn’s death in 2023, with Gary taking weekly business trips back into Hillsboro or Portland, OR to continue his engineering work there until his retirement in 2018.

Before eventually winding down and retiring her own McVicker & Associates business, Carolyn also found many areas of volunteer work opportunities in which she could contribute her talents. Upon first considering Pacific City as a place to live, Carolyn was struck by the amount of public lands that were already in the vicinity, and she started and/or assisted in a number of projects in which additional private lands were brought back into public hands for both the good of the community and for all the other species with whom we share this world.

Whether it was fighting the spread of invasive scotch broom or the protection of threatened native species, Carolyn believed in paying her dues, giving back and paying it forward. She served on the board and design committee of the local HOA and on several other local boards, including the Pacific City Joint Water-Sanitary Authority (PCJWSA), serving for many years as its chair. Bringing clean, fresh surface water to supplement the existing wells and installing more modern and efficient sanitation systems to clean the waste were the two key goals she had in seeing that her community would remain vital and hospitable through the next generation. She was proud that PCJWSA acquired a long-term lease on a neighboring BLM parcel, on which she spearheaded a project to build a hiking trail, and that the donations collected over the years by the Pacific City Pathways organization’s fundraising events also ultimately helped pay for the creation of other hiking (and cycling) trails in the vicinity.

She was very close to her nieces and nephews, always finding or making time for them. She loved to cook tasty food from good-tasting ingredients, and she tried her best to support the local farmers and vendors going strong year after year. She collected cooking books and loved to watch cooking shows, and was adventurous in the kitchen. When asked what she was making, Carolyn usually said she did not know what to call it, partly because we don’t eat the food’s names but mostly because it was usually an improvised medley of several recipes for which the existing names were never quite adequate. She rarely made the same dish the exact same way twice, as she was endlessly experimenting in several different directions at once.

Carolyn also enjoyed music of all kinds, from Motown to Mozart, from Schubert to Ella. She liked soothing and soulful music playing in the background at home and KMHD jazz playing on the road to and from. She loved hearing concert pianists and quartets play live at Neskowin Chamber Music concerts and especially on their piano at home. Carolyn loved Pacific City and being at home, whether it was walking the long stretches of beach, watching families of whales, hearing the giggles of the eagles, or just noticing the grand pageant of weather passing by every day, and she looked forward to being here for many years of retirement. She embroidered dish towels, helped great nieces learn to create their own wardrobe items, from little black dresses to comfortable clothes to wear anywhere. She was signed up to attend a couture class in Paris this November, a dream that undoubtedly helped sustain her until the end. But most importantly, she enjoyed communicating with people, clearly articulating what she meant to say and how she went about saying it. She cared deeply about peoples’ feelings as well as their thoughts, and she cared most fondly for those who could also reciprocate.

Carolyn is preceded in death by her parents. She is survived by her loving husband of nearly 35 years, Gary; three siblings and their spouses, David ('74) and Shanna McVicker (of Bremerton, WA), Sandi ('76) and Bob Rasmussen (of Kingwood, TX), and Mary Kay McVicker Camp (HHS) and David Camp (of Portland, OR); nine nieces and nephews; many great nieces and nephews; one great great niece (with more on the way); and innumerable cousins everywhere.

Some possible non-profit organizations which she would love to see additional support for include the following: South Tillamook County Library Club, Cloverdale Nestucca Valley Lions Christmas Baskets, Grateful Grub Inc., Wikipedia, Journalism Fund for Willamette Week (Via Tides Foundation and Network for Good), Nestucca Valley Backpack Food Program, Food Roots NW, OPB, Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, and Neskowin Chamber Music.

One or more public events in remembrance of Carolyn may occur, and if so, notes will be added to this obituary.

View and sign the online Guest Book.

Note: Her brother, David ('74), passed away on December 30, 2023.

Bomber Memorial put together by Shirley COLLINGS Haskins ('66).