Henderson

Get to know your people; or, it’s reunion season.

Effenus Henderson (left) is an internationally known human resources and diversity thought leader. Wade J. Henderson (right) is, among other things, former president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. About 15 years ago, the two met at a National Urban League conference.

“You’re from North Carolina?,” asked Wade. “My father was from Wilson.”

“You need to talk to Lisa,” said Effenus.

Wade did. And in 2016, there we all were — in Dudley, North Carolina, birthplace of our grandparents, at the Henderson Family Reunion.

Wade’s grandfather Jesse “Jack” Henderson and my great-grandmother Bessie Lee Henderson were siblings. Jack came to Wilson around 1908, and my grandmother Hattie Henderson Ricks, Bessie’s orphaned daughter, arrived a few years later. Wade’s father Dempsey Lee Henderson was born in Wilson in 1927, and my father Rederick C. Henderson in 1934.

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Is your Wilson County-based family having a reunion this summer? I’d love to feature it here — and add your reunion flyer or program to my collection!

Photo in collection of Lisa Y. Henderson, 2016.

Remembering my father today.

Four years. It seems simultaneously as if he’s been gone forever and just left yesterday. A couple of weeks ago, I was going through a file and found a note I’d scribbled about my dad:

All of us had to be somewhere. The whole family. And we couldn’t be late, so it dismayed me. I was the first one in the shower, and the water was rising around my ankles, and I thought, “Damn.” I heard my mother in the hallway, asking — water was backing up in her bathroom, too.

Let me back up. I was not really first in the shower. My father was. Hours ago. Long before the rest of us even turned over good, and he was out the house, in the yard, probably raking. Breathing the air before everybody else breathed it, as he liked to say.

I was concerned by what’s happening with the drain, but I soldiered on because I was shampooed to the hilt, and when I finally rinsed everything out of all this hair, I cut the water and heard: the plumber.

Before I could even step on the bathmat, the plumber was at the house, with a crew, waiting. The main drain pipe was clogged, but they made quick work of that and were gone. Thirty minutes, tops, from crisis to resolution. Even my mother, who had seen much of this kind of thing over decades of marriage, was amazed: “Red, where’d you find that plumber so quick?” (And on a Saturday.)

“Wait,” he said. “I’m your husband. I ain’t no joke.”

And then: “I can get stuff done. That’s why you married me, girl!”

(A few hours later, when she remarked on the house being a little humid, he said, “You want me to get somebody to get the muggy out, too?,” and they both laughed.)

If you knew my father, you know he had a saying for every circumstance. This fell under:

“You gotta get up. You get up, you can get something done. And you gotta know somebody. I know folk. I been here all my life….”

Rederick Caswell Henderson was born in Wilson, and he died in Wilson, four years ago today. I miss my father bone-deep, but the day seldom passes that I don’t grin ear to ear and give a nod of thanks as one of his aphorisms pops into my head. Rest in power, Daddy.

303 Elba Street, for sale.

When I first hit Wilson, I always pay my respects to my father and grandmother at Rest Haven and to the dead of Vick, Odd Fellows, and Rountree Cemeteries, and I always check on 303 Elba Street.

My family owned this little house from 1908 until 1938. My grandmother grew up here, Jack Henderson lived here when he first arrived in Wilson, and my father and his siblings were born here. It was, as the old folk say in Wide-Awake, my family’s “home house.”

Friday, for the first time since I’ve been paying attention, a For Sale sign hung out front.

If I were burning money, maybe I’d hand over $38,000 for a tiny house that needs a complete gut to be habitable. As it is, I’ll just pull up to the curb to pay homage to Hattie Henderson Ricks and Jesse and Sarah Henderson Jacobs as long as 303 stands. 

Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, May 2026.

Boy Scouts, circa early 1930s.

Lucian J. Henderson attended a jamboree in the early 1930s and, by the looks of it, he was not a happy camper.

Henderson is the first boy on the front row.

Here, he is the third boy on the back row. The building behind the boys appears to be a school.

The details of the troop’s uniforms are consistent with those worn by the Boy Scouts of American in the late 1920s and early 1930s:

  • broad-brimmed, high-crowned felt campaign hats with “montana peak” indentations;
  • long-sleeved shirts with two buttoned breast pockets and epaulets;
  • neckerchiefs worn knotted or with woggles; and
  • knickers tucked into high socks (full-length trousers became common in the 1940s)

Lucian Henderson up close. Notice the penknife hanging from his belt and the flashlight clipped to the belt of the boy behind him and the knife on the boy to his side.

Photos from personal collection.