Elisabeth M. Hanson, 98, seventy-year resident of Champaign-Urbana, died surrounded by family Saturday May 14, 2016, at Clark-Lindsey Village.

She was married in 1942 to Alfred O. Hanson, who died in the year 2005. She is survived by their four children: Andrew J. Hanson (Patricia Foster) of Bloomington, IN; Donald F. Hanson of Eden Prairie, MN; Ardith M. Hanson (Royce Field) of Colorado Springs, CO; and Craig D. Hanson (Janice) of Rochester, NY. All four of the children attended Leal School and Urbana Junior and Senior High Schools. She is also survived by four grandchildren: Russell Hanson and his sister Sonya Hanson, both of New York City, Katherine Field Carlton (Cory) and her sister Elizabeth Field, both of Colorado Springs, CO; and one great-grandchild: Maddox King Carlton of Colorado Springs.

Elisabeth was born November 2, 1917, and grew up in the University town of Columbia, Missouri, where her father, M. F. Miller, was a Professor and then Dean in the College of Agriculture, specializing in Soils. Her mother, Grace Ernst Miller, had also been an Academic in the Natural Sciences, specializing in Botany. When her three brothers, Edward, Robert and Dan Miller, grew up to be Academics in various branches of Physics, she declared that she alone had managed to escape the family bent toward the academic sciences. Her own interests evolved eventually toward statistics, the graphic arts bolstered by two short sessions at commercial art schools, interpretive cartography, and the study of natural history (including Field courses in Botany and Geology). She was a wonderful example to her family, providing a role model of a life spent engaged in curiosity and search for knowledge to her very last days.

Throughout girlhood, and college years, known as Betty Miller, she lived at home with her family, joining them, summers, in outdoor-oriented activities. One summer, the whole family accompanied her agronomist father, on a weeks-long tent-camping tour of the Corn Belt, where he collected soil samples for his research.

As a girl, Elisabeth was active in a Nature- and Native-oriented Camp Fire Girls' Group. In 1938, after graduating from Stephens College and the University of Missouria