Jens M. Hansen, Parkville businessman
Jens M. Hansen, a manufacturers’ representative whose Norwegian heritage led him to portray 10th-century Norse explorer Leif Erikson, died April 13 at Gilchrist Hospice care in Towson of complications from a fall. The Parkville resident was 84. The son of Norwegian immigrant parents, Jens Martin Hansen was born in Staten Island, N.Y. His parents died when he was young, and he was raised in the city’s Pimlico neighborhood and later Sparrows Point by foster parents.
He was a graduate of Sparrows Point High School. During the 1950s he served in the Army, working with ordnance in Germany.
After being discharged, he worked in Baltimore in sales for several electrical supply houses before establishing his own firm, Marty Hansen & Co., a business catering to electrical manufacturers.
Mr. Hansen was joined in the company by his companion of 48 years, Helen Coleman, who continues to operate the business. He had not retired at his death.
A member of the Sons of Norway, Mr. Hansen made his own Viking costumes — including steel helmets. Through the years, he portrayed Leif Erikson at Norwegian cultural gatherings and in parades throughout the state, Ms. Coleman said. An outdoorsman, he enjoyed skiing at Wisp resort in Western Maryland, and during summers sailed the Chesapeake Bay with Ms. Coleman, and windsurfed in the Florida Keys.
He also liked dining out and visiting family and friends.
Acelebration of life service will be held in June on the Chesapeake Bay. Plans are incomplete.
In addition to Ms. Coleman, he is survived by his son, Dr. Michael Hansen of Cologne, Germany; two grandchildren; several nieces and a nephew. His marriage to Liana Hansen ended in divorce. be an equal in the classroom.”
After completing medical school in 1948, she worked in the psychiatry departments in the medical colleges of Stanford and Harvard, in addition to what is now Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Weill Cornell Medical College, both in New York City, from which she retired about a decade ago.
In the 1960s and 1970s, she advanced the concept of teen peer counseling for teenagers — the idea that support groups led by peers rather than authority figures would be most effective for young people in need of guidance. After suggesting students work in peer groups, she recalled others remarking, “This is the craziest idea ever suggested. Who thinks that adolescents are going to be able, are equipped, to help other adolescents?”
Hamburg said she saw how the students were learning to work together and to better understand themselves and others. “She taught high school kids to essentially say to their friends, ‘I’m worried about you. ... I’m concerned. I miss the old you,’ ” said Virginia Anthony, former executive director of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. “It was a very significant preventative concept.”
She and her husband, psychiatrist David A. Hamburg, studied the biology of stress and how people cope. They co-wrote in 2004 a book, “Learning to Live Together: Preventing Hatred and Violence in Child and Adolescent Development.”