Dates

• Existence: 1920 - 1980

Biography

Lorraine Rogers Hansen, homemaker and bakery-owner, was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1920 to Martha and Frank Rogar, who later changed their name to Rogers. Frank Rogers was a shoemaker and Martha Rogers ran a boarding house where the family lived. Lorraine Rogers had a sister, Virginia. After high school, she became an art student at Milwaukee State Teachers' College before eloping with Raymond Henry Hansen of Primghar, Iowa, in 1940. They had met many years earlier when he was a boarder at her mother's boarding house and the two corresponded for years before their engagement.

The couple moved to Manson, Iowa, and opened the only bakery in the county. Hansen often worked at the bakery and eventually took over the cake decorating and deliveries. The bakery usually employed two or three people as well as the Hansen children, Truman, Randall, Marsha, Sylvia and Jeffrey. In her spare time, Hansen taught art classes and did calligraphy for Bibles and diplomas. She joined the local Methodist Church and became a 4-H leader in the 1950s. Hansen died in 1980.

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