“He was kind and good,” Natalie Lund said of Phil Hanna. “Always.”
Lund, Hanna’s longtime partner, walked into the Genealogy Center to deliver books she found while going through his things. She felt they would be of interest to Hanna’s former coworkers Mike Watson and Annita Dial.
Charles Philip “Phil” Hanna, who died on June 26, had worked at the Genealogy Center since it was founded in April of 2021. Always interested in history and genealogy, it was not uncommon for Hanna to take his work home with him. As Watson and Dial both said, Hanna loved his job. He loved coming to work. The Genealogy Center was his connection to Adair County, a place he had lived for over 20 years but did not truly feel part of until he began working officially with its people and history.
Hanna’s story began when he was born in 1951 in Louisville. His early years were spent attending American schools in Lebanon where his parents, Rev. Edwin B. Hanna and Arpine Yenovkian Hanna, were missionaries. Growing up in the Middle East led him to live through historical events such as the Six Day War, which he had numerous stories from that he regaled Lund, Watson, and Dial with.
A “living encyclopedia,” Hanna was able to both recount events he lived through and those he researched in immense detail.
While he was not a trained genealogist, “he was a researcher,” Dial said. It was common to have a conversation with Hanna where he would pause, say he needed to learn more about something, and days later report his findings. When she first met him on New Year’s Eve 28 years ago, Lund says Hanna was describing Louisville’s bridges he had learned about.
Lund says Hanna “went to school a lot,” and her observation is supported by his three master’s degrees. Lindsey Wilson College, where he worked for nearly a quarter of a century, also awarded him an honorary doctorate. Missionary parents led him to a degree from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, as well as degrees in social work and library science from the University of Louisville and University of Kentucky. He would use both of the latter degrees extensively at Lindsey where he was a Foreign Student Advisor and eventually the Director of Library Services.
After retiring, he came to the Adair County Public Library and began working in August of 2019. Eventually, this became a position at the Genealogy Center.
“Our little group at the Research Center quickly became an assembled family,” Watson stated in a reflection on his time with Hanna. “Phil drew each of us into other aspects of his life.”
These aspects included his eclectic music tastes; his extensive repertoire of stories from living abroad in his youth; his travel tales, including a 1970s trip to the West Coast and back accomplished through hitchhiking; and, generally, the way he saw the world, where everything was art and all art was beautiful.
“He was very visual with something being art, no matter what it was,” Dial said.
Watson agreed, saying, “He could see beyond the mundane.”
Hanna was a devoted employee to the Genealogy Center. Before his passing, a pet project of his was to go through old obituaries on file and ensure each entry also had a page on the Find a Grave website. Even now, remnants of his appreciation for art and others can be seen in the collection of paintings and lists of concerts and recitals he encouraged others to attend.
For now, Hanna’s desk still sits untouched at the Genealogy Center, ready for another day of work. Hanna himself had his arrangements managed by A.F. Crow & Son Funeral Home in Glasgow. A celebration of life is planned for this fall.
By Kenley Godby
kenley@adairvoice.com
