Henry continued from cover page

Photo by Tom Campbell It may be a while before this draft horse pulls a plow in front of Henry. The colt was born at Historic Prophetstown this spring.

and see exactly what I mean.”

Well, a ride on Cumberland Avenue takes you past six large medians, full of trees, shrubs, flowers and mulch, all of which require a lot of maintenance and tender care.

“It’s a big job, and he just does it,” Lillich says. “We are very lucky to have him; I don’t know what we will do when he can’t help anymore.”

According to Henry, he plans to keep working on the Cumberland landscape as long as his legs will allow it.

“I just love being outdoors; the work doesn’t bother me,” he says. “I’m just glad to get out of the house every once in a while.”

In addition to working on Cumberland, Henry is a member and former chairman of the grounds committee for Westminster Village in West Lafayette, where he and Marge have lived for the past nine years.

As a resident of the retirement community, Henry found himself wanting to plant trees and flowers and give the place an overall makeover. So he decided to join a committee dedicated to maintaining the landscape of the small community north of the Purdue campus.

Keep in mind this was 14 years after his retirement.

“It keeps him active and healthy, and that has always been very important to him,” Marge says. “He’s a very disciplined person.”

Henry retired in 1982 from the agronomy department, where he worked for 16 years as a technician/administrator.

Apparently all the work he did in the agronomy department paid off, because according to Lillich he knows a great deal about the environment, horticulture and agronomy.

“Normally during our meetings he is very quiet, but when he does speak up, everyone listens up because he knows so much,” she says.

Before going to work for Purdue, Henry managed several farms in the Lafayette area for Collings Farm Management Services.

Never losing sight of his farming background, Henry also volunteers at Historic Prophetstown, a 300-acre 1920s living history farm at the new Indiana state park north of campus. The farm isn’t much different from the one Henry grew up on near Evansville, Ind., in the 1920s and 1930s. In the summertime, Henry makes his way out to the Prophetstown farm to work every Wednesday.

“I lead tours, drive horses and do all sorts of farm work,” Henry says. “I’ve been helping out there ever since it first started five or six years ago.

“I love taking visitors out on tours and explaining how everything works together to help run the farm. It brings me back to what it used to be like at my home farm when I was a kid.”

Henry’s first job after college was as an administrator for the Farm Security Administration (now Farmers Home Administration), a part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that provided loans to family farmers. “I worked there for 16 years as a farm supervisor for several counties in Indiana,” he says.

But Henry says the two most memorable moments in his life had noting to do with farming or his professional career — they are when he married his college sweetheart in 1940 and when he enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1943.

The Henrys have raised three daughters, who now live in Washington state, Florida and Michigan. The Henrys have five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

“This year we will celebrate our 65th anniversary,” Marge says. “It’s amazing how fast the years have flown by.”