In telling us how he came to novel writing in retirement, Jack Henderson focused on the convoluted path his life took. He was born into a large family in Chicago and is still a big Cubs fan. He had all the usual teenager jobs of the time: paperboy, dishwasher, caddy, etc.. He noted that his third novel draws on those youthful experiences.
The family moved at start of high school to a much larger district, and Jack was voted “most reserved” as a senior (hard to believe now!). In high school he learned life lessons from his distance running, teaching him about the time it can take to reach goals. In college he became more motivated to study. After college worked in manufacturing jobs, and during that time he developed a new passion – folk music, which motivated him to drive to Austin Texas, attracted by the music scene. Click READ MORE for the rest of Jack's story.
Jack started learning to play guitar and writing songs, then moved to Boulder CO. Again he worked at whatever he could: phone operator, donut shop, and a at gas station. He began to specialize in writing humorous songs, then moved back to Chicago where he played in bars, coffee houses, folk clubs, colleges. He got some airplay and recrded one album. He then moved to LA for a while to live with an uncle.
In early 30’s, realized that music and odd jobs wouldn’t last. Jack decided to go back to school and got a PhD from the University of Florida. After earning the PhD in history, he started teaching at U of FL but didn’t like the impersonal nature of a large university. After writing hundreds of letters, Jack found a girls school in Nashville, and it finally felt like where he belonged. He coached track and cross country at the school, where class sizes were cloer to 15 than 180.
In retirement, started to read popular and regional fiction and thought, “maybe I could do that”. Started to research family history as well as Wisconsin history. Generations back, Jack had a Native great grandmother. Wisconsin was very different that long ago. Got interested in passenger pigeon. Migrations were so dense as to block out the sun. White pine forests dominated the landscape. Drawing on that "old Wisconsin" along with the much transformed early 1900's Wisconsin gave him the structure for his first novel.
About the Speaker: Jack retired from teaching and coaching at a girls school in Nashville Tennessee in 2019, and he moved to River Falls. Since then he has worked in the clubhouse at Kilkarney Golf Course and as a letter carrier in River Falls. Jack has a BA from Western Illinois University, an MA from Southern Illinois, and a PhD in American History from the University of Florida. Jack and his wife live on the same street as his son and daughter-in-law and two grandkids. His daughter is an engineer at NASA where she helped to design one of the engines for the recent Artemis II rocket that orbited the moon.