Obituary: My 2614 Mile Spiritual Journey With Todd Hansen

When I first met Todd Hansen back in 2017, he was a General Authority in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who wanted to get in some bicycling. He and Sharon moved in across the street and we started our adventure.

Todd had commented that I seemed to coast downhill a lot faster than him. I thought for a while and asked him what his tire pressure was. He answered “Oh, about 60 psi.” I gasped and suggested we immediately go to 110 psi, which I showed him on his tire sidewall. Then I asked when he last lubed his chain. He answered, “What’s a chain lube.” I gasped again. He’d gone many hundreds of miles without lubing his chain! We picked up some chain lube on the way home from our ride. But my big mistake was sharing with him how to climb hills fast.

When we climbed hills, he’d put his bike in the lowest climbing gear, and he looked like a little chipmunk as he pedaled as fast as he could. On Friday, June 30, 2017, I explained that he should crank up the gear by four notches and then stand up and climb the hill. Except when I played what I called “Reindeer Games” and cheated, that was the last day I ever beat Todd up a hill. On Saturday, July 1st, we rode 50 miles and Todd beat me up every hill. Turns out, he’d been a distance runner in high school and had very strong legs.

On Saturday, July 22, 2017, Todd and I had a great 5am ride.

I think this is a symbol of my association with Todd. We talked a lot about heaven-ward subjects, and truly enjoyed seeing hot air balloons against a clear, blue sky. I’d wrestled with how to address him: Elder, since he was a general authority and due that respect. He said at church, Elder might be best. But on our rides, he’d just be Todd.

That first year, we rode over a thousand miles together. I did a lot of listening and Todd used his time to process some of the lessons he’d learned in life. I made him laugh a lot and he frequently said, “Rick, you’re a work in process.” Oh how true.

On the trail, we kept passing a garishly blue house for which Todd coined the term, The Bootlegger’s Bride. Here’s the house:

I never did work up the courage to knock on the door and ask the owners about their choice of house color. But I’d fantasize that a bootlegger lived there, and he’d give his wife anything she wanted. Including the color of their house.

Early in 2018, out of the blue, Todd started asking me questions about my being an ordinance worker in the Draper temple. And not just a few questions. Initially, I thought he was wondering about his pending release as a General Authority. So I suggested he and Sharon ought to?be ordinance workers in the temple. But he said he saw all those guys just sitting there in their posts at the temple, and didn’t think he would like to spend all that time just sitting. I explained that the sitting was a 30-minute rest after two or three half-hour shifts doing other ordinance work, and that after three shifts doing that I got “punchy” and welcomed some down time. Then the inspiration struck and I said, “Hey, you’re about to get released as a Seventy, and we need a new temple presidency. Congratulations on your new call!”

Todd about wrecked his bike and said, “Don’t hold your breath!” Finally, on May 18, 2018, he sent me the clip that was about to be published in the Church News.

“Don’t hold your breath.” That line has since stuck in my mind, so when I inquired of him whether he’d gotten a call from Salt Lake on his pending release from the Draper Temple, I fully expected him to tell me not to hold my breath. That would have signaled that something was afoot. But instead, he said, “Honestly Rick, there have been no phone calls from Salt Lake.”

I didn’t believe that at first. One of my “gifts in life” has been to be where the action was. My ads took Oracle from $15 million to over $1 billion in sales. I took a wild man named Marc Benioff and did all the pre-IPO advertising for Salesforce. In 1978, the year I ran for Congress in the State of Washington, I took the Summer off to make a movie with my Explorer Scouts. At the time, I was Elders Quorum president and the guy I home taught also took off the Summer to make a movie. His name is Ed Decker and he created the attack on my church, The God Makers. Like I told Todd, I’m where the action is and you are destined for great things in the kingdom of God. I just didn’t realize which side of the veil Todd’s greatness would manifest itself.

But this year, with one health crisis after another, I got another inkling. about a week before his death, I picked up raisin cinnamon rolls from what Todd introduced to me as “The Celestial Kingdom of Bakeries” in American Fork and sat down with him. He’d just been in the hospital for three days getting tests, and was scheduled to get the results the next day. I shared with him that maybe he hadn’t been getting a call from Salt Lake but from higher up. Then, I think we both knew that we both knew the end was near. That Friday, his family kindly included me in a family Zoom call where they announced that he’d been diagnosed with Leukemia and would be in the hospital for a full month, on chemo.

Monday (April 11th), I texted Todd and said I heard he was coming home for a few days between chemo sessions, and wondered if maybe Tuesday or Wednesday I could bring by some more Celestial cinnamon rolls. Wednesday morning as I was taking the dog out, I got a text from Todd’s phone and got set to go get rolls. But the test was from his Eldest Daughter Heather, saying that Todd had “passed through the veil” at 10:30PM on Tuesday night.

So I've been doing some serious reflection on life. All in all, my favorite rides with Todd always recorded our pictures in front of Bridal Veil Falls. Here’s our Wednesday, September 25, 2019 picture:

From left to right are Todd, Bob Johansen, Mark Valentine, Ed McCartney and myself. Bob Johansen was the mid-day temple coordinator on the Thursday mid-day shift. Ed McCartney worked in the temple baptistry Thursday mornings, and I was on the AM shift. Mark Valentine is a pediatrician who takes Wednesdays off. I used to ride with this group in in my old neighborhood, and it included my internist, too. On one ride, we ran into some neighbors and I said, “I like to ride with my doctors.” Valentine quickly responded: “Yeah, his internist because of his age, and a pediatrician because of his behavior.” Sheesh.

So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. My OCD has resulted in logging every bicycle Ride I've ever taken. Miles, elevation gain, and my riding companions. I've gone through those logs and added up my rides with Todd Bailey Hansen: 2614 miles over the five years I've known him. We talked a lot about life, our spiritual journeys, our values. They teach in church that you can't compare yourself to other people, that your test is with yourself. I don't believe that. The apostle John beat Peter in a footrace to Christ's tomb (John 20:3-4). And I've always tried to associate with people who I judged to be better than me. Todd was such a man, and I think my family, friends, and business associates have benefited from his influence on me.

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