MnDOT Engineer's Decade-Long Red Wing Bridge Project
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- A major bridge is going up in Red Wing, a project the Minnesota Department of Transportation says will cost around $110 million.
The new bridge will replace the one in downtown Red Wing, and will open in 2020. The manager of this project has been working on it since 2010.
Chad Hanson is helping build that bridge without lifting a finger, while sitting in his Rochester office.
"I got this little dot on my glasses and that's for my mouse. So wherever I look, that's where my mouse goes," he said.
A microphone is his keyboard; he speaks and it types.
"I can type a lot faster than I used to before my accident," he said.
While some may barely remember the nights that comprised their college years, there was an evening that Chad Hanson can't forget. It was 1998, the engineering major had stayed up late at the University of Minnesota studying and hurried home to Goodhue for a long day of hunting with friends.
"I was driving on the road I had probably driven on a thousand times before, basically fell asleep and the car went off the road, hit a field driveway and my car flipped over. I was hanging upside down in my car with the radio still going. I was wide awake," he said. "I totally remember it. I never got knocked out, didn't get a bruise on my body or anything. Basically it just crushed my spinal column, basically cut my spinal cord, so that's why I'm like this."
It may sound like he's oversimplifying things, but to Hanson, it is that simple.
"Hasn't really changed anything," he said.
After months of communicating only with blinks, he was released from the Mayo Clinic. He was able to resume his education, but there were other things he would never get back.
He says he can't move his fingers, has limited movement in his arms and he can't move his legs. But he can make things happen, and at MnDOT, he's figured a way around.
"He's just one of the crew. He just might need a little more help than others," coworker and fellow engineer Heather Lukes said.
In a job that's all about problem-solving, lunch may be the only thing he needs extra assistance with in this office.
"He's one of our top project managers," supervisor Tom Wagner said. "Chad's project, the bridge here in Red Wing, will take about 10 years total and cost round $110 million. They call him 'The Velvet Hammer' because he gets things done but he does it but he does it in a manner that's mild and doesn't upset people."
But Hanson not only works hard. He plays hard, with his 6-year-old daughter.
"They go to the park together in the summer and she'll ride her bike, he'll wheel himself down and try to keep up," wife Andrea Hanson said, before recalling the origins of their love story. "One of my mom's friends mentioned that someone she helps out needed someone else to help, too."
The high school teacher took the part-time job and it didn't take long, though Chad Hanson said he had to work pretty hard.
"People have asked me, 'Is your marriage hard?' To me it's not hard, cause this is all that I've known and this is the man that I love," Andrea Hanson said.
He's a man you could call remarkable, but he'd rather you not. He says he's just an engineer who's figured it out.
"I don't see it as really different," he said. "I went to college, got a job, got married and had a kid."
The Hansons say when they're in public they often see people stare, but they want to encourage people who see people with disabilities to ask questions, and have conversations.
They are happy to share their story they insist is really nothing special, though many people may disagree.