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Written by Beth Luce
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Page 4 of 4
Six years after the accident, he completed a degree in construction management at the UW. The other students helped him get to his classes, he says, pushing his chair across campus so he wouldn’t be late. Once, when an out-of-order elevator stood between him and an important exam, his fellow students carried him up to the classroom. “I couldn’t have made it without those guys,” Hennig says.
After graduating at the top of his class, and with his previous business administration degree and on-the-job experience, he thought he’d have no problem finding a job. “But what I was forgetting was that construction jobs start early,” he says. It takes him at least three and a half hours to get ready in the morning, so starting a job at 5 a.m. never worked out. He then worked for a time as a construction estimator, with a 9-to-5 schedule. He learned a lot there, but he found that the paralysis in his hands made it hard for him to move the large pieces of paper around, and he couldn’t work as fast as his coworkers. By that time, though, he had begun teaching classes several nights a week at the Associate General Contractors of Washington. He and another teacher developed a series of four continuing education courses for the construction technical skills program and co-taught them. He became the program’s director, which he continued for 11 years before retiring.
These days, Hennig can often be seen at the UW Medical Center, where he serves as a volunteer in many capacities. As someone who’s been there, Hennig helps others see there is life after spinal cord injury.
“I’m grateful for the fact that I’m still making a difference, being involved in the mentoring program, the different committees I’m on,” he says. His attitude comes from growing up on a cattle ranch in the Tri-Cities area, where he worked hard and learned not to complain, he says.
“When people ask me how I managed to cope with the loss,” he says, “my answer is faith in God and the strengths my parents taught me as a child. Regardless of the paralysis, I need to carry on in life. That’s part of why I’m so involved in the volunteer programs at the University—to try to make the system better.” Beth Luce is a Seattle free-lancer and frequent contributor to Columns.
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