{"id":794307,"date":"2019-03-29T15:44:01","date_gmt":"2019-03-29T21:44:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/steamboats-lacrosse-father-chris-hahn-remembered-for-his-humor-benevolence\/"},"modified":"2019-03-29T15:44:01","modified_gmt":"2019-03-29T21:44:01","slug":"steamboats-lacrosse-father-chris-hahn-remembered-for-his-humor-benevolence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/steamboats-lacrosse-father-chris-hahn-remembered-for-his-humor-benevolence\/","title":{"rendered":"Steamboat\u2019s lacrosse father Chris Hahn remembered for his humor, benevolence"},"content":{"rendered":"
Steamboat’s Chris Hahn, far left, died Tuesday of an aortic aneurism. Here he sits with his family, from left, wife, Mary Grace, and two sons, Kieran and Liam, on a ski vacation.<\/strong>
Courtesy photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS \u2014 Laughter is the best medicine, and although it cannot cure all, it helps the family and friends of Chris Hahn in his absence.<\/p>\n

Hahn died suddenly last Tuesday from an aortic aneurysm while filming his son Kieran\u2019s lacrosse game in the press box at Gardner Field.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was doing exactly what he loves,\u201d Hahn\u2019s wife, Mary Grace, said. \u201cNothing brought him more pleasure than watching his children participate in everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mary Grace and Chris met at William & Mary University at a fraternity party.<\/p>\n

Chris, a computer science major, started helping Mary Grace with her computer science homework. The two found themselves in the same tennis class during Mary Grace\u2019s junior year and Chris\u2019 senior year, and they started dating.<\/p>\n

Mary Grace moved to Steamboat Springs after graduation to spend a winter skiing, and Chris followed. They married six years later and spent their lives traveling the globe together \u2014 they were married for 28 years.<\/p>\n

The Hahns planted their roots in Steamboat in 1990, then enjoyed a year in Venezuela from 1996\u201397, five years in London from 2008\u20132013 and 18 months in Switzerland from 2013\u201314. Their sons Liam, now a sophomore at Middlebury College in Vermont, and Kieran, now a Steamboat Springs High School senior, shared in the adventures abroad.<\/p>\n

Chris loved listening to people\u2019s stories and learning their languages. He spoke Italian, Spanish and some French.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we lived in Switzerland, they had this big building that his work owned and Chris made it a point each day to take his lunch and sit with a different group of people at a different table in the cafeteria,\u201d Mary Grace said. \u201cIt didn\u2019t matter if it was a group of maintenance workers, the administrative people or the executives, he just made it a point to get to know everybody and to relate to people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris\u2019 charisma<\/p>\n

Chris\u2019 fearlessness to try new things, like languages, is what drew him to be a part of a wide range of activities in Steamboat Springs from mountain biking to yoga to C-league hockey.<\/p>\n

\u201cChris wasn\u2019t afraid to try something new because he wasn\u2019t going to be good at it,\u201d Mary Grace said. \u201cHe didn\u2019t mind going out and playing hockey and falling on his face or going out and shooting 100 at golf \u2014 none of that bothered him. We played 15 years of adult C-league hockey, neither one of us were good, it was just for fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

That same fearlessness to try new things was passed down to his sons. Liam joined an improv comedy group without any stage experience and joined the sailing team in college while Kieran decided to try competitive cross-country skiing at the beginning of high school.<\/p>\n

Friends and family said Chris walked into every room and was able to read the people in it and make witty comments to shift a mood.<\/p>\n

At times, he was almost too daring with his humor, according to longtime friend Gardner Flanagan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI visited him when he lived in England, and we were driving somewhere and we were coming up to a rotary and I asked him, \u2018Chris, is it hard to drive in a rotary when you\u2019re learning how to drive on the other side of the road?\u2019\u201d Flanagan said. \u201cAnd he said, \u2018No, it\u2019s no problem at all,\u2019 and then he proceeded to drive right over the rotary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jim Boyd, Chris\u2019 longtime college best friend, recalls Chris was always able to effortlessly charm a waiter into free appetizers, drinks or desserts. But it was never for himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we went home from Switzerland, he had a bazillion miles and points and stuff and he had the VIP card, and I just got the cheapest ticket I could to get over there,\u201d Boyd said. \u201cHe talked me into the VIP lounge, to the front of the early boarding line, through the short line to security and I just had a regular ticket. Chris was flying first class, and I was sitting back in the nose-bleeders and \u2026 I\u2019m turning to go back to my seat \u2026 He gives me a big hug and thanks me for everything, and he pushes me up to first class.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris\u2019 fun personality was a quality that made him a leader people wanted to follow, whether it was during his 10 years at Smartwool or in his everyday life.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe could motivate you to do anything,\u201d Liam said. \u201cMy friend and I spent an entire summer where he decided to dig up the yard at our house and re-turf it with grass. It was the worst work you\u2019ve ever done because he wanted this grass to look really flat, but somehow, he managed to motivate me and my buddies to sit for hours a day just raking dirt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Giving back<\/p>\n

Chris\u2019 benevolence came before his humor. He was the man who gave the kids on the streets of Venezuela money for food and prioritized his time for the benefit of friends and family.<\/p>\n

The Hahn family\u2019s home always had the table set for friends of Kieran\u2019s or Liam\u2019s, where Chris entertained them as family.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs fun as it was and as cute as it was when they were little, the teenage years have just been great, and everybody crosses their eyes when I say that,\u201d Mary Grace said. \u201cIt\u2019s just been fun going to all the sports games and having conversations and having debates and discussing what they\u2019re learning in school.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a parent of two athletes, Chris volunteered at ski events, filmed lacrosse games or even made friends with the parents of the opponents sitting in the stands.<\/p>\n

Chris was working in IT consulting, but dreamed of retiring and becoming a high school teacher in math, Spanish or computer science because he believed he could open kids\u2019 minds.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone who was here the other night said that he was the most alive person they\u2019ve ever known,\u201d Mary Grace said. \u201cHe lived every second of every day. It\u2019s sudden and awful but it\u2019s how he lived \u2026 and for whatever reason it was done. He didn\u2019t suffer and, truly, he would\u2019ve been OK with that. But I think he would\u2019ve liked another 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steamboat’s Chris Hahn, far left, died Tuesday of an aortic aneurism. Here he sits with his family, from left, wife, Mary Grace, and two sons, Kieran and Liam, on a ski vacation.Courtesy photo STEAMBOAT SPRINGS \u2014 Laughter is the best medicine, and although it cannot cure all, it helps the family and friends of Chris […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-794307","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 04:31:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}