Searching for the Sea

Charles Hanna tells the story of his early career as a journalist, reporter, and columnist for newspapers in Missouri and later for the Minneapolis Tribune. He tells about covering the jazz scene and interviewing celebrities including Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington. He describes how he changed paths in mid-career to find success as a public information officer for the City of Minneapolis. While holding a series of administrative posts, Hanna reshaped capital improvement programs, created citizen participation programs, and designed a new management system integrating program development, planning, and budgeting. The author explores the early history of the Hanna Clan, which survived the bloody feuds of sixteenth century Scotland, and he follows Robert Hanna, his third great grandfather, first as a Virginia foot soldier at the beginning of the Revolutionary War and riding out of Valley Forge in a calvary unit under George Washington's command toward the end of the war. There are stories about the writer's boyhood, his love of jazz, his service in the Air Force during the Korean War, and how he returned home to marry Elaine G. Michaud and started a family. The first member of his family to graduate from college, he was also the first to move from Missouri. It was a new beginning for a lifetime of adventures.