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Simply Irreplaceable

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He was the kindest, most decent person I’ve ever known. Tom Hanneman, legendary Minneapolis sports broadcaster, recent Midwest Emmy® award inductee and father of three, died suddenly on Dec. 18 at his home in suburban Minneapolis. He was 68.

A cousin 12 years and 2 days my senior, Tommy enjoyed a storied broadcasting career that would be the envy of any journalist. Tens of thousands will remember him for his calls from the broadcast booth, but his true impact in the world came through his family and the countless one-on-one interactions he had with people in all walks of life. He took interest in them all, treating everyone with respect and kindness. When you talked with Tom Hanneman, you mattered. And he meant it.

The world needs more men like Tom Hanneman. We now must learn to live with one less.

Thomas Donn Hanneman was born in La Crosse, Wis. on June 29, 1952, the third of nine children of Donn G. Hanneman and the former Elaine Kline. He was one of three boys in the Hanneman clan who matched wits and traded lightning fast humorous barbs like they were fired from a Gatling gun. To listen to the Hanneman boys left you with sore ribs from laughing. I don’t know if they rehearsed their act, but Tom, John and Jim, had they not followed the paths they did, could have done a stand-up act worthy of Carson or Leno. Tom and John did great voice imitations, something Tom later employed with great humor as the fictitious basketball announcer Bill Beek (see the video below).

Every encounter with my cousin Tom started the same way. He looked me square in the eyes, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “How are you? Tell me what’s been going on.” He listened, asked insightful questions and gave his appraisal of the things of life . His interest and concern were genuine. That never changed, not once over five decades of our interactions. You can’t teach such things, nor can you force them. Those qualities are a gift from God. Tom made very good use of them.

When God was handing out good looks and talent, Tommy got in line twice. He had the Hanneman face that embodied the young movie-star looks of our then-19-year-old grandfather, Carl F. Hanneman (1901-1982). And that voice. My father was told in high school that he had a stentorian voice. Powerful. Indeed his singing could lift the gabled roof off of Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Catholic Church. Tom had a polished voice made for TV and radio — smooth as tiramisu or a sip of Baileys Irish Cream. His broadcast timbre was like listening to Jim Nantz call the PGA championship or Pat Summerall at the Super Bowl. It never gets old.

Carl Hanneman (left) circa 1920; Tom Hanneman in mid-1970s.

Tom started his career as a radio disc jockey at Minnesota State University. In 1973, he wrote a letter to Dave Moore (1924-1998), the legendary anchorman at WCCO-TV Channel 4, the CBS affiliate in Minneapolis. “Dave helped me get a foot in the door at ‘CCO as a dispatcher,” Tom said in his Emmy® acceptance video just a month before his death. “A lucrative job that paid $1.35 an hour. It didn’t matter. Dave Moore taught me many things certainly about the value of mentorship. It’s a lesson that I’ve never forgotten.”

Tom spent 16 years at WCCO as a sports reporter and anchor, then became a TV and radio host for the Minnesota Timberwolves NBA franchise. He eventually became the Timberwolves’ television play-by-play announcer. The Timberwolves assignment lasted for 23 years. He then became the face of Fox Sports North in 2012, anchoring pre- and post-game coverage of the Twins, Wild, Timberwolves and Minnesota Gophers. Viewers and sports fans affectionally referred to him as “Hanny.” Over his long career, he covered the World Series, Super Bowls and even the Olympic Games. He became known for his quick, dry wit and high jinx with radio partner Kevin Harlan (you can read a beautiful summation here; h/t to Jim Hanneman and his son, Leo).

Tom wasn’t kidding about being a mentor. He played that role to many people. During my freshman year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Tom got me tickets to see the Wisconsin Badgers and Minnesota Gophers play hockey in the WCHA Tournament at the old barn, Williams Arena in Minneapolis. Wisconsin swept the series on its way to the 1983 NCAA championship. What a memory! On one of my other visits, Tom invited me to the WCCO studio to watch the 6 p.m. newscast from behind the cameras. Although I was already well along on my road to a degree, that visit helped cement my own intention to make journalism my career.

As Tom described it later, one of the dramatic bookends of his career came in May 1979 when he volunteered to cover a violent uprising of factions of the Red Lake band of Chippewa Indians in northern Minnesota. Tom and cameraman Keith Brown beat the FBI to the scene and walked right into the middle of pure chaos. They were fired upon by 20-year-old Gordon Wayne Roy, then taken hostage by the madman. The men were ordered to lay on the pavement. Roy held a gun to them and “threatened to blow our heads off,” Tom said. After Roy tried to run the pair over with their own car, Tom and Keith escaped with the help of a neighbor. The memory was still vivid in 2020:

“It certainly gave me clarity, when you come close to death, about what’s important and what isn’t. There’s gratitude every day, if you look for it, that you’re simply alive.”

— Tom Hanneman

Tom’s broadcast career reads like something deserving of an Emmy® Silver Circle Award from the Upper Midwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Watch the tribute produced by the Midwest Emmy Academy:

A beautifully produced look at Tom’s incredible career, as he won an Emmy Silver Circle Award for his five decades in broadcasting. “I wouldn’t be here tonight without help — plenty of help,” he said.

One of my favorite memories of Tom came on Oct. 23, 2013. We met for coffee at the Beyond the Daily Grind Cafe in Mauston, the sleepy little city on the Lemonweir River where our fathers grew up. We reminisced about the trips our families made over the decades to visit Grandpa Carl and Grandma Ruby Hanneman at the green-sided house at 22 Morris Street. Fishing with cane poles off the back of the Dr. Hess property along the river, then cleaning the catch for dinner — there was nothing better. Talking with Tom was like a great conversation with your best friend. I will always treasure that day.

Tommy on a visit to Mauston in October 2013. We always talked about a return trip, but that will have to wait for Heaven.

Tom was a big supporter of my work on the Hanneman Archive, the web-based project to document the family’s historic journey from Germany, Pomerania and the Czech Republic to nearly 170 years of history in north-central Wisconsin. Just about every time I talked to him or exchanged emails, he thanked me for the effort put into family history. That meant a lot. Now it means even more.

“I have thought about our visit to Mauston frequently in the years since,” Tom wrote me back in June 2020.

“That town will always be magical to me.”  

“I planned on suggesting a return this summer and then the pandemic hit,” he wrote. We talked about making a visit one day at Christmastime to the Boorman House Museum in Mauston, which proudly displays a beautiful large-format framed pastel that once hung in the office of Gov.-elect Orland Loomis of Mauston. Loomis gifted the artwork to Carl Hanneman for his work to help elect Loomis in 1942. The pastel later hung in my parents’ living room for more than 50 years.

Minneapolis hockey history: a Fox Sports North story by Tom Hanneman.

As much as his impressive career meant to him, Tom was first and foremost about family. His eyes sparkled when he talked about his children, Adam, Courtney and Kyle; and his five grandchildren. In his Emmy® speech, Tom spoke lovingly of Nancy, his wife of 44 years, and how she put up with his late nights and travel schedule, all while raising the children and managing her own career as a nurse.

I know how grieved he was in August 2017 when his younger brother, John, died after a short battle with cancer. John was just 56. “It breaks my heart,” Tom wrote me in July 2017. “We’ve been able to spend time with him at least once a week, but his cancer continues to grow and has worn him down. The three Hanneman brothers decided years ago that spending time together on Christmas Eve wasn’t good enough. We headed north for a few days every summer and got to know each other. I’m so thankful we spent that time together.”

The other dramatic bookend to Tom’s career came in July 2019. The arteries to his heart were choked off and he was rushed into surgery for six-way bypass surgery. “He said he woke up in the intensive care unit, looked around and thought, ‘Oh, so this is what it’s like when you die,'” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported. After his recovery, Tom said he was so thankful to get another chance at life. “I’m a lucky man and I know it,” he said in his Emmy presentation just weeks ago.

Of the dozens of tributes posted to social media the afternoon after Tom’s death, one stated it quite beautifully:

“He was just a great pro. He made every day better. When you’d see him, you’d say, ‘OK, everything is good today.'”

— Jeff Munneke, VP, Minnesota Timberwolves

Tom is survived by his wife, Nancy; his son Adam Hanneman (Rachel); daughter Courtney Tapper; son Kyle Hanneman (Ashley); his mother, Elaine; sisters Diane Hanneman, Caroline Balch, Jane Olson (Charlie); Mary Cochrane (Mick); and Nancy Sullivan (Mike); and brother, Jim Hanneman (Margaret). He is further survived by his grandchildren, Shae, Ryn and Laine Tapper; and Jack and Mia Hanneman. Tom was preceded in death by his father, Donn; his brother, John C. Hanneman; his son-in-law, Joseph W. Tapper; and his brother, Thomas Patrick Hanneman. •

Tom’s colleagues at Fox Sports North put together this tribute for a Timberwolves game.

©2020 The Hanneman Archive

Crime Stories, Family Tales, General History, Hanneman

Tom Hanneman Taken Hostage: ‘He Threatened to Blow Our Heads Off’

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Television reporter Tom Hanneman thought he was going to die on May 19, 1979 when a combatant in a violent feud between factions of the Red Lake band of the Chippewa Indians held a gun to his head and threatened to pull the trigger.

Hanneman and cameraman Keith Brown of WCCO-TV Channel 4 in Minneapolis were getting video footage of a fire on the Red Lake Indian Reservation when they were attacked by an armed 20-year-old man. While Hanneman sat in a rental car, his cameraman was outside. “We came to the main road and wanted to get a final shot,” he said at the time. “A short time later I heard a ‘smack’ like a rock hitting the pavement.

“It was a bullet. Keith said it missed his head by about two inches.”

Cameraman Keith Brown and Reporter Tom Hanneman (Minneapolis Star photo by William Seaman)

A tribal member armed with a pistol approached the journalists and ordered Brown to smash WCCO camera equipment valued at $60,000. He then ordered the men to lie down on the road. “He tormented them by holding the gun at their heads ‘cocked back and saying he is going to blow our heads off, how would we feel,'” Hanneman said, according to an account in the Minneapolis Star. “I thought I had had it.”

While Hanneman and Brown were prone on the pavement, the man got in their car and tried to run them over. “He got in the car and started coming at us,” Hanneman said. “I got up and put my hand up and tried to talk to him. He told me to get back down. But when someone tells you to lie down and is trying to run over you, I didn’t want to stay down.”

The gunman eventually left with the rental car. A nearby family offered the journalists refuge, and then helped them get to Bemidji, Minn.

Earlier that day, an armed faction of dissidents raided the Indian Bureau of Law Enforcement building on the Red Lake reservation and took four police officers hostage. They later set fire to the building and a number of law enforcement vehicles.

Dramatic Newscast

On the WCCO 10 p.m. news that night, Hanneman recounted the terrifying day. A transcript of the dramatic interview is below. A video of the newscast (from TC Media) is at the end of this story.

***

WCCO Anchor Don Shelby: Tom, tell us your story.

Hanneman: “We found the main road leading into Red Lake was blocked by a Red Lake fire truck. We got out of the car to shoot some scenes at the police station, which was still smoldering. At that time we heard shots fired and some ricochets off the fire truck that we were standing next to. Obviously we were being shot at. We threw our hands up and a group of Indians came over and wanted to know what we were doing and we explained.

“We left that area to go and shoot some more scenes. Keith Brown drove to a back route to shoot the police station, and also a police car that was aflame, an abandoned police car. He went into the woods and came running back a few minutes later. They had fired on him and the bullets hit the water right in front of his feet.

“We had three incidents that happened this afternoon, Don, the third was by far the worst. We were about ready to leave the area and Keith was going to shoot the final shot of the main street. I was in the car. Keith was outside with the door, the back door open. At that moment I heard what sounded like a rock hitting the car. It was a bullet. It hit the door, ricocheted up and Keith said it missed his head by no more than two inches. A man again came at us with a pistol, ordered us out of the car, and at gunpoint had Keith smash our videotape camera and the tape recorder onto the road. 

“He then had us lay in the road in the median, threatened to blow our heads off holding the gun at our heads, tormented us for a while and then got into our rented car, turned around toward the road, sped up — what seemed to be an obvious attempt to run us over. I got up. I just couldn’t sit there and let him go at me and he told me to lay down, and drove by and again threatened us many times with a gun to our heads. He finally left the area, telling us to stay. A short time later he drove off a few blocks and parked, went into an area. 

“We got up, just, we were afraid if nothing else that a passing car might hit us. Didn’t really know what to do until someone that lived right in the area, in a trailer home, yelled for us to come over. We were a little concerned that, we didn’t know what we were getting into at the time, Don. We went into his  home and (he) gave us refuge. A half-hour later took us, swept us out of town into Bemidji and we got out safely.

Don Shelby: How does it look up there now Tom, your last sight of the place?

Hanneman: “Most of the residents of Red Lake have left the area. It seems that a group of maybe 100, 150 Indians are in town. They’re all armed. It seemed to be a deserted town with just a few people running around firing guns.”

Don Shelby: How about the FBI? Have they arrived on the scene?

Hanneman: “They are there now. They have blocked off the main road into Red Lake at this time. They were nowhere to be seen at 3:30, 4 o’clock this afternoon.”

Don Shelby: You have not told your story to the FBI.

Hanneman: “No I have not. Not yet. We have just really gotten here and just starting unravel now.”

***

A few weeks later, the FBI arrested Gordon Wayne Roy, 20, and charged him with assault with a deadly weapon. On July 30, 1979, Roy pled guilty to one charge of assault with a deadly weapon. Five other assault charges were dismissed as part of a plea deal. Police said Roy had been in jail on the reservation when the dissidents stormed the building. They released him, and later that day he accosted Hanneman and Brown.

A more recent look at Tom Hanneman (©Photo by David Sherman/NBAE via Getty Images)

Five other men were convicted of various crimes in association with the armed takeover of the law enforcement building and the shooting deaths of two youths. Sentences ranged from 10 to 26 years in prison. The violence that day stemmed from a running dispute the dissidents had with long-time tribal chairman Roger Jourdain, according to news accounts.

Seven years later, in September 1986, Roy was arrested again; this time for murder. In early 1987, he was convicted of stabbing and slashing Edward White with a machete after a dispute. Roy was sentenced to life in prison.

Hanneman is a first cousin to the proprietor of this web site. He is a well-respected sportscaster in the Minneapolis TV market and beyond. For more than 20 years he was play-by-play announcer for the Minnesota Timberwolves of the National Basketball Association. He has also worked as reporter and sports anchor for CBS affiliate WCCO-TV and as an analyst for Fox Sports North. Here’s where he fits in the Hanneman tree: Matthias Hannemann >> Charles F.C. Hannemann >> Carl F. Hanneman >> Donn G. Hanneman >> Tom Hanneman.