Jon and Denise Hendrickson were an oddity when they began their careers. The longtime Fort Smith pediatricians met at a Bible study group while in medical school in Kansas City, Kan., and married while she was in her final semester of medical school and he was a first-year resident in pediatrics at Children’s Mercy in Kansas City.
“We were one of the first husband-and-wife medical teams and they really didn’t know what to do with us,” Jon said. “They put us on call different nights but we were on call every third night and that didn’t work out at all.”
“They didn’t care about that,” Denise said. “But we did!” Jon chimed in.
Residents’ hours were not limited at that time.
“You were working 36 hours, off 12 and back to work,” he said. “We would work in the neonatal nursery with people on ventilators and we’d go down to the ER and admit people with meningitis,” Jon said. “It was incredibly intense.”
After graduation, the pediatricians joined a clinic in Newton, Kan., but when a major employer left the city, the birthrate dropped by 30 percent. They left their families and moved with their two children to Fort Smith in 1989 to join Drs. Louay Nassri and Thomas Jefferson at Holt-Krock Clinic. They opened their current clinic, Pediatric Partners, 16 years ago.
“Back in the day, we worked both hospitals (then-Sparks Medical Center and St. Edward Mercy Medical Center) and took call at both places,” Jon said. “I can remember nights when I’d go, ‘Now, which hospital was I called to?’”
Jon and Denise now will try something new: retirement.
“It’s hard because you develop such relationships,” Jon said. “Now, we’re seeing the next generation. We see the children of the children that we used to take care of.”
“It’s fun. I don’t often recognize the parents, then Grandma comes in the room and I know who they are,” Denise laughed.
Mission work also has long been a part of their lives. Their interest in world travel began when they visited their daughter in France while she was getting her Ph.D. in French. They soon got involved in international medical missions through their church and have been several times to a West African village, where they befriended Abdoulaye Sadio, a Christian pastor.
Sadio has visited the Hendricksons in Fort Smith and even said a prayer – in French – at their daughter’s wedding.
“The home village of this pastor was of Muslim faith and he was ostracized and, finally, because of all these medical missions, it was an opportunity to see that people did care and they showed love and compassion and they did help,” Jon said.
“Because we had been there and had a clinic, then they accepted him and he was able to start a church in his home village,” Denise said.
It is now an active, growing church.
Typically, their mission trips include 10-12 people, including dentists, nurses and doctors. They see and treat all manner of illness and ages, not just children. Their daughter often does translation work when Sadio visits churches in this area.
It has been life changing for the couple to see how the villagers live and to see other cultures. And they are continually amazed how God is at work in Western African.
“We saw a baby that was 2 months old, had fever and was unresponsive and dying. A missionary prayed over the baby that God would be glorified and 20 minutes later the baby was normal,” Jon said, still amazed.
“Somebody gave us an extra $100 because God told me to give you this because you’ll need it. One of the first people I saw, a little girl, 13, had appendicitis out in nowhere. We were 21⁄2 hours away from a hospital,” Jon said. “They didn’t have any money but we said we’ll take her anyway. She needed surgery or she would die,” he said. “They did surgery and she did well.” The hospitalization and surgery were $100. Exactly.
Jon also is involved in local missions and said his volunteer experiences have made him more compassionate and understanding. “Fort Smith has a lot of different cultures and we’ve been blessed to see a lot of those people,” he said.
Denise retired about a year ago and has been teaching herself German and cooking a lot. (“And I’ve been eating a lot!” Jon added.)
But the stories from the office continue.
“Four-year-olds have no inhibitions, they just tell it like it is,” Jon said. “One little boy was staring at my white hair. I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ He said, ‘My momma’s hair was like that but she fixed it!’”
“You want to be one of those people who remembers the good ole days but I remember all the days,” Jon said. “And the future is bright, too. It’s going to be different.”
“We’ve worked together for 40 years,” Denise said. “I know people say how can you do that but I don’t see how we could have done it without each other.”
– Donna Payne
