Deceased December 7, 2017
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In Memory
Bill Hannemann—smart, handsome, funny—died Dec. 7, 2017.
My initial memory? Beanie clad at a fat rope’s end, the sophomore class promptly dragging us into the pond. Our friendship—Hannemann’s and mine—lasted more than 60 years.
With Patterson and Zinner, we roomed together sophomore year. We sang and sang, harmonizing Hannemann’s cowboy songs in the Pratt common bathroom. We were good!
Rooming together at Chi Psi senior year, we hardly saw one another. He’d built a study cubicle in the attic and disappeared there for great spans of time, but he became well-educated—Sphinx Society, honors thesis, etc. (At times he’d head off to Harvard’s Widener Library or D.C.’s Library of Congress and, when asked why, offered his finest Willie-Sutton-inspired “That’s where the books are, dummy!”
Hanneman’s successful career included a Stanford M.B.A., a stint as director of admissions at the graduate school of business there, manager of a diamond company and senior management of Adidas and Gyro.
Early on, we shared Christmases and each other’s weddings. I “borrowed” a fighter jet to get to his and Judy’s; he met me at the airfield, promptly thanked me for the wedding gift but complained the single seater would not accommodate his bride! He and Judy had three kids together, and he never lost his taste for Wild Turkey. Rumor had it he was athletic too, but when teaming up on the links for member/guest tourneys, we’d always come in last!
Classmates may want to dip back into our 50th reunion volume, in which Hannemann shared his six “Lessons Learned” as a successful businessman. The sixth, harking back to Stanford admissions, was that it was fun playing God, but “only if you never run into those you rejected!”
Hannemann—smart, handsome and funny!
Frank Leftwich ’58