Hanley's mother said her son had a "Huckleberry Finn" childhood. He built forts, climbed trees and hiked, and enjoyed playing baseball and bike-riding all over the city. Summers were spent at Townsend's Inlet, N.J., where he fished and swam. Hanley loved children, working with underprivileged youths at Camp William Penn, and later he often wrote home from Vietnam about the plight of the children in that war-torn country. Hanley graduated from West Catholic High School in 1967 and enlisted in the Marine Corps that September. He was sent to Vietnam in March 1968 and assigned to Company H of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division. The 19-year-old lance corporal, an automatic rifleman, died in Quang Nam Province on July 26, 1968. He was survived by his parents, a brother and a sister.