William W. Hansen, 79, a broadcasting executive who helped found the Joliet/Will County Center for Economic Development, died Wednesday, March 20, of cancer in his Naperville home. Mr. Hansen was born in Burlington, Iowa, where his parents owned a corner grocery store. He went to the University of Iowa to study business but left to enlist in the Army. During World War II, he flew missions over Italy as a tail gunner. He returned to the university after the service and graduated in 1947. Mr. Hansen sold Kraft products for four years, but when his father died in 1951, he quit to help his mother run the grocery store. His radio career began in 1958 when his best friend, who was the manager of a station in Burlington, told him about an opportunity at another station. Mr. Hansen’s performance as the station’s general manager impressed the station owners and in 1964, they asked him to run stations the company had bought in Joliet. He served as general manager of WJOL, an AM station that broadcast local news and sports, and WLLI, an FM rock station. In the mid-1970s he began buying his own radio stations and eventually would own 10 stations in Colorado, Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa. The Joliet stations he managed were sold in 1987, and he started a radio brokerage company called Midwest Broadcasting Inc. “He loved selling, he loved dealing with people, he loved being in the limelight,” said his son Michael. Mr. Hansen served as president of the Illinois Broadcasters Association in 1974 and was awarded the Vincent T. Wasilewski award for lifetime excellence in broadcasting in 1993, the same year he moved to Naperville. Mr. Hansen and other businessmen saw that in the early 1980s, Joliet was economically depressed. They banded together to found the Joliet/Will County Center for Economic Development, a non-profit foundation. He was involved in it for 15 years. Besides his son, other survivors include his wife, Cecilia; another son, Thomas; a daughter, Elizabeth ; a sister, Janet Thomas; and seven grandchildren. A mass will be said at 10 a.m. Saturday in the Cathedral of St. Raymond Nonnatus, 604 N. Raynor Ave., Joliet.
