The odd couple.
Wray teen, 91-year-old man form an unlikely friendship.
WRAY» What do a Styrofoam cup filled with noodles and “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” have in common? About as much as an 18-year-old woman and a 91-year-old man.
But somehow, these two things came together as a teenager forged an unusual friendship with an aging senior in Wray.
To make extra money for college, Paige Brown took a job in companion care with Northern Colorado Caregivers during her senior year of high school. She worked an after-school shift about four nights a week, from 4 to 9 p.m., caring for Bob Hansen.
During the shift, Brown spent time playing card games with Hansen, doing chores around the house and making dinner for him. And like clockwork, the two also would sit down to watch “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt.”
This is when Brown introduced Hansen to the popular college meal of Cup Noodles.
“I had never seen them before,” Hansen said.
And now, without hesitation, he proclaims the noodles to be one of his favorite things to eat, along with ice cream. His family members have had to add Cup Noodles to the list of groceries they pick up for him.
Brown and Hansen sometimes laugh about how they are on opposite spectrums of their lives. Hansen started working as bank president at First Pioneer National Bank in Wray in 1965 and retired from that job in 2018. Now mostly homebound, the 91-year-old is trying to keep active and stay healthy enough to remain in his house.
“It’s where I am most comfortable,” he said.
In contrast, Brown, who has lived her whole life in the rural eastern Colorado town of Wray, is leaving her family’s home, for the first time, to attend Colby Community College in Colby, Kan., where she will study to be a physical therapy assistant.
Like many American families, Hansen’s children are faced with the difficult task of making decisions about caring for an aging parent. According to the Center for Aging in Place, “between 2006 and 2030, the 65-plus population is expected to nearly double.”
As the population of aging seniors
grows, many more families will be confronted with similar questions about care for their aging loved ones.
Kris Leighton, the middle of Hansen’s three adult children, explained when she and her siblings began considering how to care for their father.
“It was shortly after my mother died. He was still doing well, but then he took a fall, and then another. We started talking about getting some help,” Leighton said.
Leighton, 66, lives in Berthoud, which is a three-hour drive from Wray. She makes the trip once a month to help her father with things such as cutting his hair the way he likes it.
“He was still working. We kind of just wanted somebody to come in and make sure he got out the door in the morning OK, and when he came back that he was OK,” Leighton said of the decision in 2017 to arrange care for her father. “There was nobody here to spend the night or anything, but the more falls he took, the more we knew he needed help.
“It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy for any of us. He had been so independent. He had always taken care of us. We had always gone to him for help. It was hard.”
Now the family has help from a team of people from Northern Colorado Caregivers staying with Hansen. Besides the short window from 2 to 4 p.m., there is a caregiver with Hansen at his house 22 hours a day. There’s even someone who stays overnight in the guest room.
A different caregiver now fills the shift Brown worked before leaving for college.
“It is so incredible in this little town to have such amazing caregivers, but that Paige is something special. He is going to miss her,” Leighton said.
One of the things that Hansen said he’s going to miss most about Brown is their Friday night trips to the Wray Cafe for pancake night.
“She’s a good eater! Last time we were there, she ate two pancakes. I could only eat one,” Hansen said.
To celebrate their last night together, Brown took Hansen to dinner at the Wray Cafe. It wasn’t Friday night, so there were no pancakes to be had. Hansen ordered a hamburger, and Brown got chicken nuggets and fries. That night it was Hansen who had the good appetite — maybe he was trying to make the night last a little longer as the two sat and talked for a while and he finished the fries she didn’t want to eat.
“It started out as just a job,” Brown said, “but now we are like best friends. We have fun. He is part of my family, and I am now part of his.”
She plans to visit Hansen during breaks from college and hopefully take him to a few more pancake dinners when she’s back home in Wray.
“I’m going to miss her something awful. She’s pretty hard to beat,” Hansen said. RJ Sangosti: 303-954-1321, rsangosti@denverpost.com or @rjsangosti