Hanna Spencer, 101
Hanna Spencer, 101, passed away on Sept. 23, 2023, surrounded by her family. She was born on Jan. 15, 1922, in Copenhagen, Denmark, to Boris and Elsa Lehmann. She moved to Calgary, Alberta, Canada, when she was 5 years old; she spoke no English when she started school there.
The family moved to the Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, area where she continued through high school and followed her older sister Lilly into nurses training on Vancouver Island; when completed she became a registered nurse.
Hanna met the man she would marry (he was recovering in the hospital where she worked) he had been a prisoner of war in Germany during World War II. She married Lambert Charles Patrick Spencer on Oct. 3, 1947, in Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada.
In 1960, Hanna, her husband and four children moved to Australia they all got homesick and returned to the USA. Back in the Flathead Valley again, following the catastrophic flood of 1964, Hanna assisted with giving immunizations to people of the community.
Later in 1964, the family decided to give Australia another try and stayed until 1967 when her husband Lambert Charles Patrick Spencer preceded her in death due to a heart attack. She moved back to Canada with four children, almost all teenagers, (that had to be a scary time for her). They stayed with her parents for about a year at their farm in Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, Canada. Then she and the four ventured back to Kalispell to begin her life as a single parent. She took refresher courses while she worked taking care of two elderly sisters and managed to regain her RN status. She went to work in obstetrics at the hospitals in Kalispell and Whitefish over her long career in the Flathead Valley. She was involved in the deliveries of babies of many friends of her daughters'; and then also in the deliveries of the babies of those babies later on. During her work as an obstetrics nurse she flew by helicopter to remote locations in inclement weather (at times, blizzards) to help the delivering mothers.
Following her retirement Hanna volunteered to teach cribbage to fifth-grade students to help with their math skills. Also, she volunteered to deliver meals to homebound residents. She continued to deliver meals until she was 89 when she fell in her driveway while shoveling snow. She broke her hip and had to stop. She couldn’t drive and had quite a long recuperation with the assistance of her daughter Karen.
Hanna is survived by her daughters, Jackie (Craig Cable) Spencer, Patsy (Don) Abney, Karen (Ron) Worley and her son Daniel (Julie) Spencer. Hanna is also survived by her 11 grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren, and one great-great-granddaughter.
There will be a private memorial service in the future for family, as Hanna would have chosen if it was up to her.
