Conner Drake Hanson

As many of you already know, our oldest Son Conner passed away completely unexpectedly Wednesday August 21st at 6:04 pm from an acute stomach infection, and complications immediately following. He was 30 years old and in the prime of his life.

A few things about Conner you may or may not know. He was born in Ft. Carson Colorado on 02/19/1994 at 5:58 am. He was a curious and mischievous boy and early on it was clear that he was highly intelligent, as he was potty-trained, began reading at a very early age, and was a skillful creator of things with his hands.

In 1997 Conner moved to Alabama with his family where his younger brother and sidekick Alec was born. He loved to play with his brother, and sometimes that playfulness could be to his brother's detriment and even once resulted in an unintentionally broken arm.

In 1999 he moved to Texas with his family, and he started school.  He was always showing signs of incredible brightness, and the mischievousness continued. Often Heather would find entire packages of pre-cooked chicken breasts and other food items in his room after he had decided in the middle of the night that he was starving. He fancied himself as a barber and cut his own hair on more than one occasion and it usually happened right before a school picture was to be taken. Conner later became a cat burglar and led an expedition of young accomplices into a vacant house that had been left open to free his trapped dog Rascal who managed to find himself locked in a bedroom of the vacant house. Ultimately his engineering skills prevailed, and he employed a toilet plunger to suck out the window glass like he had seen on cartoons. He did NOT go to prison for this misadventure.

In 2001, his parents Heather and Chris met, and our family was formed. On 02/28/2005, Conner and his brother Alec were formally adopted and became Hansons for life. Conner made many friends and lived in Pflugerville for approximately the next 20 years. As a boy he enjoyed playing in his yard fort with his brother and many neighborhood boys where every stick became a rifle, sword, lightsaber, or a baseball bat and many epic battles were fought against unseen foes. During one of these battles the police had to intervene as some of the bad guys had decided to take up a high position on the roof at their elementary school during one Christmas Holiday. Again, Conner avoided prison.

Conner began playing youth baseball and football and was undersized but extremely tough.  He was a Pop Warner Panther and then became part of the East Metro Wolfpack. On one occasion, Conner made a tackle on a kickoff return where a boy likely 3 times his weight met him head on. Everyone thought that Conner was seriously injured when he jumped up, looking through the earhole of his helmet, spun it around and then started jumping up and down and howling like a wild animal. He became known as "The Destroyer".

Into high school Conner continued with football playing linebacker at Pflugerville High School as a Panther, and then added wrestling to his list of activities. He excelled in wrestling due to being a skinny and very flexible aggressor and utilizing one specifically unique shooting maneuver that was not taught by any coach. Conner joined the Paul Green School of Rock where he learned to play guitar and Bass, and the showmanship and uniqueness that was Conner began to show up. He was a chameleon of style and would wear outlandish outfits and different hairstyles no one would ever think of putting on and wore them to school with great pride as well as to numerous concert venues, clubs and bars where the band would play. He and some other boys formed a short-lived band called Angergy and it was pretty terrible. He also began to learn woodworking and went on to build numerous guitars with his father. Just prior to turning 14, his mother took him to an open casting call where Conner was picked out of a group of extras to become a role player on Friday Night Lights Television Series where "Landry Finds his New Bass Player". After joining the Screen Actors Guild, shooting the scene and being paid handsomely for his acting prowess, Conner proudly showed off a check for more than either of his parents had ever made in a week at that time. He decided to spend that money on his first car, his beloved 65 Mustang.

Shortly after turning 14 and surviving nearly blowing his head off with a full soda can placed into a lit barbecue pit, Conner located, purchased and began working on his 65 Ford Mustang. His mechanical ability blossomed overnight, and throughout high school where he was the auto tech foreman, Conner continued to pull motors and parts in and out to tweak and beautify his mustang. After his car was totaled in a hit and run, Conner rebuilt the car better than in was before and taught himself body work, metal fabrication and welding solely for the purposes of resurrecting his car. Which he did.

After graduating high school in 2012, Conner briefly attended Texas Tech University where he did terribly but owned it.  We learned then that he preferred working with his hands as opposed to sitting in a class. Conner started working as an Auto mechanic at various shops in Pflugerville and Austin and struck out into the world as a man where he met Anysa. In 2015, they welcomed their beloved daughter Sibyl into the world. Conner always worked his hardest as a young father and made the difficult decision to sell his first Mustang so he could better provide for her and obtain a safer more modern vehicle. He would later have several other Mustangs in various states of completion.

Sibyl is the pride of Conner' s life and was his guiding light on his every decision going forward in life. Conner, who had grown up in the outdoors regularly hunting and fishing with his father, brother and friends, began to take his little girl with him into the woods. He loved teaching her about nature, how to fish and shoot and loved hunting rocks and petrified wood for hours with her and his family. Sybil and Conner took many cold early-morning rides on his 4-wheeler together at deer camp and numerous coastal fishing trips where the 2 of them would drive nearly 70 miles onto the Padre Island National seashore to camp, fish, and build sandcastles together. He loved these trips with her. Conner learned to skateboard so he could do it with Sibyl and her friends and their dads who regularly gathered after school and on weekends in the cove across from his house to ride halfpipes and watch the kids play together. He taught her how to ride a bike and would always dust her off when she fell, giving her the confidence to try new things. Conner often smoked his favorite meats to feed the masses. He was a skilled barbecue chef and enjoyed tending the pit as well as building custom smokers.

Conner worked as a Systems Tech for the City of Round Rock for a few years and received numerous awards, as well as becoming the employee of the year in 2021, in part and after he and another co-worker maintained the potable water supply by themselves for nearly a week during Snowpocalypse, by using propane torches to manually keep the last remaining water valve at Lake Georgetown from freezing and cutting off the fresh-water supply to Round Rock.

During his time with the City of Round Rock, Conner met his buddy, Kirk. The two of them became fast friends. Despite their age difference, Conner spoke often of the connection he had to Kirk and Conner truly loved bowhunting, riding around, working on Kirk's hotrod Camaro, scuba-diving and drinking cold beverages around a campfire with him. They loved to hang out together and had terrible luck driving around in mud. This had led to multiple misadventures and overnighters trying to dig out various vehicles they got stuck on the ranch. Kirk loves both Sibyl and Conner and often would host them both at his ranch for outdoor activities and fishing. Conner never spoke better of any persons other than he did of Kirk and his own brother Alec. He was so proud of Alec for being the "best father I know" and often boasted and was amazed on how Alec could juggle a million things and still find time to spend with his house full of girls. He loved his nieces Berkley and Macey who they affectionately dubbed him "uncle stinky" and looked forward to meeting his new one due in a couple months. Conner was thankful for his sister-in-law Morgan who often helped him with Sibyl and their dog Trooper. He enjoyed being around Morgan and her sister Colleen who were like the sisters he always wanted. He never put his family to the side and showed up for everything.

In March of 2022, Conner started his real career with Eaton. He was incredibly proud of this new job and position and the friendships he had quickly formed with co-workers like Jerry. He was ambitious and driven and learned quickly. According to his boss Ronnie, Conner touched many people in the Eaton family in the short time since he had started on the field service team responsible for keeping critical infrastructure online like 911 centers, hospitals, military bases, hyperscale facilities and sites like Tesla. He was on a 5-man team in Austin working with 30 other engineers statewide who were responsible for Texas and Louisiana. Conner had already been recognized in Houston earlier this year at the Eaton annual conference and received performance awards. According to his boss Ronnie, he was considered the future leader of Austin. He appreciated the life this job was allowing him to provide for Sibyl and looked forward to a long career and new opportunities with Eaton. In fact, he liked the job so much, he later dragged along his great buddy Cody to Eaton and shortly thereafter Cody's wife followed suit and went to work for the company herself.

Conner had many good friends that he loved. He loved cutting up and hanging out with he and his brother's buddy Tim from high school, Cody who he worked with at Round Rock and later at Eaton, Derek, Lee, and the rest of the gang from the deer camp. Conner enjoyed Thursday outings after work with Jerry and the other Eaton "old guys" who he was learning the ropes from as a Field Service Lead Engineer. Conner enjoyed going out on Jerry's boat and getting to take Sibyl along. He planned on following in Jerry's footsteps and soaking up all the knowledge he could before Jerry decided to retire.

Conner had lived several lives before many men have live one, he struggled through difficult times as we all do, but persevered and always achieved his next goal to be a good dad and to ensure Sibyl had all she needed to be a thriving young lady. Conner was reliable and helpful and never denied anyone a hand with any project that they had gotten in over their head on. He would put his things to the side to show up for you and often take on the heavy lifting on those projects himself. He was an artist and a creator. He was highly skilled in anything mechanical and technical. Meticulously spending time welding, building, fabricating things for his truck, 4-wheeler and repairing all his father's broken-down junk and vehicles. He also liked to sketch elaborate anime characters and share those with Sibyl, and he loved to read books. He loved to cook and did so beginning out of necessity and then later choosing to eat clean and healthily and work out every day to stay fit. Conner had very long and meaningful conversations with his mother Heather about his ambitions and his thoughts and goals for life. His mother was his biggest advocate and confidant, and she loved him with every fiber of her being. The conversations with his father Chris were more geared towards hunting topics, building things and inappropriate memes. They texted or talked daily now more than ever and shared music and ideas for the latest projects they wished to undertake together. Conner and his brother Alec had grown into more than just brothers and fathers but had become friends too and would make regular plans together to take their girls on outdoor adventures at the ranch.

Recently, we had learned of young woman he had met and was getting to know. He was a cautious person and took dating very slowly, but we believe he was on the right to track finding his happiness with another partner.   He had already taken her to the deer camp which he saved for people in his close circle and family.

Conner was loved and respected by many; He made us incredibly proud. As you can imagine, we are utterly devastated and are trying to make sense out of this the best way we can. We know that time will ease our suffering and our memories of him will never fade. Please feel free to share any stories or photos of our wonderful son with us and those will all be shared with his most favorite person, his daughter Sibyl. She was also very proud of her daddy and will never forget the full years they had together.

A friend sent us this bible verse that seems fitting.

The Prodigal Son parable ends with Luke 15:31-32, saying: "and he (the father) said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost and is found."

Please join us for a memorial celebration to honor the 30 cherished years of Conner's life from 1:00 to 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, September 7th, 2024 at his parent's home, 209 Bobby's Cove, Georgetown, TX 78633. We invite you to an open house style gathering where we will share memories, stories, snacks, and perhaps a drink or two. Feel free to bring your bathing suits and take a dip, or simply enjoy the company of those who loved Conner.