Ronnie
Lee Henderson A Man of Action, a Man of Faith November 6, 2001
The
Sunday night before that Tuesday, Shirley Henderson had a prophetic
dream. She was in a cave, digging. As she entered a series of
compartments, she saw others also digging. A bright, bright light
beckoned her into one compartment, she recalled. There she saw
her baby son, Doron, lying in a fetal position, crying. She asked
him what was wrong but he just kept crying, screaming. Going on
two months since the Twin Towers collapsed, Shirley Henderson
is still hoping that the digging at Ground Zero will uncover some
trace of her husband, Ronnie L. Henderson. A veteran firefighter
with Engine Co. 279, Ladder 131, in Brooklyn's Red Hook section,
Henderson, 52, reportedly was in Tower One when he was last heard
from. "The minute that building went down, I felt a part of me
die," Shirley Henderson said. "I knew Ronnie was in there." She
and her husband of 20 years were dating back in 1978, when he
was trying to scale the barriers that kept blacks beyond the doors
of the city's firehouses, Shirley Henderson said. "I remember
him saying, 'I'm going to get this job.' He was determined because
he felt African-Americans were not represented enough in the firehouse."
Later in his career, he even took it on himself to hand out applications
to young African-Americans. "He was the type of person who if
something had to be changed, it had to start with him," Henderson
said of her husband. "He was a man of action." Her husband was
also a man of God, Shirley Henderson said. He was a member of
the Church of God by Faith in Newburgh, N.Y., where a memorial
for him was held Oct. 14. Even in his fire truck, his Bible was
always within reach. A veteran of Vietnam and the Persian Gulf,
the former Marine led prayer meetings in the Saudi Arabian desert,
his wife said. "If we could talk now, he would tell me to rejoice
because he's in the kingdom of God." Henderson was born in Charleston,
W.Va. At 13, he moved to Brooklyn with his mother and stepfather,
the late Wilda Laruth Henderson and Valestine S. Dillard. After
graduating from Alexander Hamilton High School, he worked as a
longshoreman and later attended John Jay College in Manhattan.
On the night before the attack, he had stayed over at the Queens
home of his best friend, Bruce Platt, an EMS worker with the city's
Fire Department, so he wouldn't have to commute from his home
in Newburgh to begin his 9 a.m.-6 p.m. tour Sept. 11, his wife
said. As Platt tells it, Shirley Henderson said, her husband stayed
up half the night telling his friend how much he loved her and
their four children, Marshall, 27, Lakimmie, 25, Hashim, 20 and
Doron. On the day of the attack, his company, located just across
the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan, was one of the first to be
dispatched to the World Trade Center. Engine Co.279 lost four
firefighters, including her husband, Shirley Henderson said. But
if he could live his life again, he wouldn't change anything.
"He loved being a New York City firefighter," she said. -- Collin
Nash (Newsday)
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