James Hendrickson (1942 – 2025)
My name is Courtney Hendrickson and I am the youngest of Jim’s 4 children. My birthday is June 10th and for 45 years I was lucky enough to share it with my dad, whose birthday is the following day, on June 11th. He was always very proud of that.
My dad loved life. He always had to have a new project going. Always had to have something new he was learning about or some new craft he had to get just right. He could fix anything and he could do just about anything he wanted or tried to. He did everything from knitting and sewing to beekeeping to woodworking and welding. He worked on cars of both the drivable and pinewood derby varieties. He loved to garden. He loved to sing and loved to laugh. He loved to live.
He was born in Pensacola, Florida in 1942 to father, Bernard Edward Hendrickson and mother, Mary Frances Elliott, siblings Lewis Edward and Barbara Jean and was later joined by his baby sister, Brenda or “Susie”, as they called her. Jim graduated from Pensacola High School before attending junior college and then joining the Air Force in proud service to our country, in 1962.
Later that year he met my mom Sandy, by chance, at an LDS church Christmas party in Abilene, Texas. He would tell you it was love at first sight! He would also tell you that he secretly had a bottle of booze he had quietly slipped back under his seat seconds after parking and realizing what kind of party he had just arrived to. It clearly was not the type of party he was expecting when he accepted the invitation.
Over the next year my parents fell in love and in 1963 they eloped, before he was deployed to Okinawa, Japan. Greatly dismayed by this, my mother’s mother insisted that she annul the marriage while he was away. But the moment he returned, unable to keep them apart, they were right back together and they remarried in a church wedding on November 5,1965, then finally were married for time and eternity in the Salt Lake City Temple in 1968.
Jim and Sandy left Abilene shortly after his discharge from the Air Force and moved to
Houston Texas, where they welcomed their first child, Charles Bernard Hendrickson in
September of 1966 and named him in honor of both of his grandfathers, Charles Marion
Buie and Bernard Edward Hendrickson. They welcomed their first daughter Stephanie Ann in July of 1968. They welcomed their second son, James Scott in May 1972 and their youngest child Courtney Janae in June of 1980.
Arriving in 1966, Jim and Sandy initially settled in Jacinto City, on the east side of Houston. Living so close to the ship channel, he soon began working in the petrochemical industry while simultaneously attending college at night to become an instrument fitter. After graduating from San Jacinto College, he found a job at Exxon and worked his way up.
A few years into this career, Jim and Sandy began experimenting with a new hobby of making rubber stamps, and eventually turned that hobby into their new business, which was run out of our home and grew quickly. As a toddler, I got to go with my dad on deliveries and also entertain customers when they came into the shop, with my frilly dresses and getting into things I shouldn’t have been, then inevitably responding with “I don’t want to understand”, when scolded for my misbehavior… Or so I have been told.
Eventually, my parents sold the stamp shop and dad returned to the Petrochemical industry.
He participated in the rebuilding of a major refinery near Amarillo, Texas in the late 1980’s and while doing so he began learning to work with a new computer based drafting program called Autocad. He became well versed in its use and soon began to write program files and design related hardware modifications to enhance Autocad’s use in designing petrochemical process control systems. For many years he was in high demand in the control system design field and after many years of working, my father finally retired in 2018.
As kids, we grew up in the Pasadena, Texas ward, where my dad served many positions in the church, and in the late 1990’s, we as a family were called to serve as stake missionaries in the Sunnyside ward of Houston, Texas where he became the stake president at one point during our mission. We hold those years so close to our hearts for the friendships, the shared knowledge, and the love that brought us together as a family that remains connected to this day. He was a surrogate father to all of my Sunnyside brothers and sisters and he learned as much from them as they did from him. Maybe even more so.
In 2002, he was so proud to welcome my son, his first grandson, Zarian. In 2006, he was thrilled to welcome my brother Charlie’s first child, his second grandson, Cole and over the moon to welcome Charlie’s twin granddaughters, Aryn and Amber the following year, in 2007. My dad was so happy to finally have grandchildren and boy did he get lucky with these 4!
You could never keep my father down. Even when he was supposed to be resting - forget it. He didn’t need to sleep! Once, after cancer treatment, my sister and I decided that it was better if my dad didn’t drive for a little while because he was weaker than he realized, at the time. So we took his keys away when he refused - he had more than one back up set. Then we tried parking our own cars behind his to keep him from driving - he backed his vehicle out of the driveway by going through the grass in the yard. Apparently, he did not have time for our shenanigans!
He was more than creative and motivated everyday of his life. And he did exactly what he wanted to do everyday, as well.
There were many things we disagreed on – nearly everything. For all the ways my father and I were different, we were, in many ways, almost the same person — as my loving partner often reminds me. There were many things I didn’t understand about my dad. The one thing I never doubted was that whenever I called my dad, he’d be there — always. No matter what time of day or what any of us needed, if we called my dad, he would come help right away. He helped so many people. He loved them and he believed in the service of others. I also understood how much he loved my mother. For 60 years they lived and loved this life together through the hardest and the happiest of times and I was lucky enough to be there for the second half.
I am so grateful for the miracle of cancer research and Car T-Cell treatment which gave my dad 2.5 more years than he would have had. 2.5 more years of memories for us to cherish. I am so grateful for the weeks we spent together in the hospital during his cancer treatment. A shared experience which earned me the nickname “the warden”, because I wasn’t there to hear “I can’t” about anything. And he never said that, either.
Cancer research means so much to our family and as an oncology nurse, I would love to encourage everyone to please, please donate to cancer research if and when you have any opportunity to do so. It could save someone you love, just like it did my dad, especially in a time when national funding for cancer research has been greatly reduced, making future miracles so much less possible.
Thank you to everyone who loved my dad. I know he loved all of you very much, too. Thank you for coming today. It is truly overwhelming how many people loved him. His absence will be big.
