Forest Lake High School’s former longtime band director and wife killed in car crash

Forest Lake High School’s former longtime band director and his wife were killed in a two-vehicle collision in the southwest metro, officials said Monday.

The crash occurred about 11:50 a.m. Friday about 4 miles south of Cologne in Benton Township, the Carver County Sheriff’s Office said.

Richard Hahn, 75, was Forest Lake High School’s band director from 1980 to June 2009, according to the band’s Facebook page.

“Mr. Hahn built a community that LOVED the band,” the posting read. “He provided legendary experiences for students. He was an educator, a mentor and a friend.”

Richard and Jeanette Hahn met at Minot State Teachers’ College in North Dakota and attended St. Cloud State University before earning their music education master’s degrees at the University of Minnesota, their combined obituary read. Jeanette was a retired choral music teacher in the St. Francis school district.

They were married for 52 years and lived in Forest Lake at the time of the crash.

According to the sheriff’s office:

Richard Hahn was heading west on County Road 50, where he obeyed a stop sign at County Road 53.

He then “began to enter the intersection, stopped again, and attempted to cross the intersection” before he was hit by a dump truck driver with the right of way while heading north on County Road 53, a sheriff’s office statement read.

Emergency responders declared Richard Hahn dead at the scene. Jeanette Hahn, 75, was taken by ambulance to HCMC and died there. The dump truck driver, 32-year-old Cole Robinson of Arlington, Minn., was not injured.