Larry Henry, former Herald sports columnist, dies at 83

Published 1:53 pm Friday, October 18, 2024

EVERETT — While growing up on a farm in the Midwest, Larry Henry hopped trains to see great athletes 200 miles away in Chicago.

Before long, he moved to the Pacific Northwest, where he wrote about people in sports for nearly 40 years as well as anyone in the sports journalism field.

The Herald lost a great sports columnist when Henry retired in 2006. The community lost an legend when he died on Oct. 4 due to health issues, according to his wife, Rae Henry. He was 83.

Larry Henry is survived by his wife, son Robert Henry, daughters Mary McBride and Stephanie Rhodes, and grandchildren Madison Henry, Jacob Henry, Kailee McBride and Joe McBride.

Larry was highly regarded by his coworkers, competitors and the athletes he covered. Kirby Arnold, The Daily Herald’s former long-time Mariners beat writer and sports editor, spent countless hours with Larry covering games in places like Seattle, Chicago, New York and Pullman.

Those who knew him say Larry’s unique ability to connect with people in minutes allowed him to convey who they truly were through his words. According to his wife of 39 years, it wasn’t just his job. It was who he was as a person. Whether it was for a column or just a conversation, her husband interviewed everyone.

“We’re going out to dinner,” Rae Henry would tell him, “and you don’t need to interview the guy at the table next to us.”

Larry grew up in a corn and soy farming family and knew early on that he wanted something different. After playing football as an undersized nose tackle at his hometown high school in Mount Zion, Illinois, Larry attended Millikan University in Decatur, Illinois, where he majored in journalism and drama. He worked for newspapers in Illinois and Kansas before making his way to Washington in the mid-1970s. Larry and his wife married in 1985 and settled in Monroe.

Larry fell in love with the Pacific Northwest and Snohomish County. He started at The Daily Herald in 1977, and retired in 2006. He continued to write for The Daily Herald several times per year after that. His last piece, printed on July 23, 2016, was a column about Ken Griffey Jr. the day before the former Mariner slugger’s induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

“He knew from just past toddlerhood that (farming) was not the life he wanted,” Rae Henry said. “He became fascinated with sports. He would hop a train and go to his aunt’s, and then he would sneak over to watch the Chicago teams play.

“That was it. He loved it.”

Settling in at The Daily Herald and Monroe allowed him access to the mountains where he relentlessly ran ran for exercise, as well as the city with professional sports to cover.

It also afforded him the opportunity to write about many types of people.

A prolific writer who often submitted five columns a week while two or three was typical of most sports columnists, Larry had a way of getting a story out of anyone he met. At that time, The Daily Herald covered Seattle’s professional sports teams, as well as high school and community sports. Larry was comfortable in any setting.

“He knew that he couldn’t just spend his life at Husky Stadium or the Kingdome or Safeco Field,” Arnold said. “It was important to him to go to Darrington High School and write a story on someone there.

“And he was so good,” Arnold continued. “He put as much passion into those stories as he did something out of the 2001 Mariners postseason. If it was a good story, Larry just launched himself into it.”

He covered some of the greatest moments in Seattle and Snohomish County sports history, and could pinch hit in a moment’s notice if The Herald needed more copy. When former sports editor Bob Bolerjack found himself with a hole on the cover of sport section, he could count on Larry to save the day by coming up with a column out of thin air to serve as the sports section centerpiece.

“Larry was a sport columnist, but to my mind he was the most talented feature writer that I ever worked with,” said Bolerjack, who attended an Everett AquaSox baseball game with Larry in 2022.

“Which is really a different thing,” he continued. “Sports columnists often times are mostly engaged in criticism, whereas feature writers are bringing out the humanity in the people that they’re writing about. And that was really one of Larry’s greatest gifts — the empathy that he brought to his work. He had a remarkable ability to put himself in the shoes of the people he wrote about, which allowed him to convey their stories in a way that I think really touched readers emotionally.”

Rhodes, Larry’s youngest daughter, remembers her father as an endlessly curious person, an avid reader and a positive, motivational person.

“He was very unlike anyone I’ve ever met,” Rhodes said. “I don’t think I would have done half the things I’ve done in my life without him being so encouraging.”

Larry was known to mentor budding journalists as well. He rarely engaged in small talk, instead favoring discussions about sports teams, books and writing. He treated people the same, whether they were the newspaper publisher or a student taking calls for high school sports scores at night.

Larry, amiable as he was, also had a very intense personality at times. On the way to a Mariners playoff game, he once hopped out of a cab before it arrived at Yankee Stadium when he felt the the driver was taking the long way to get some extra fare.

There was also a time in The Daily Herald office when he saw a word he thought had no place in a newspaper. He walked up to a new part-time sports clerk and exclaimed, “Promise me, on your honor as a journalist, that you will never put the work DINGER in a baseball story.”

Shortly after a heart procedure many years ago, he coaxed his wife into driving him to Bellingham to interview a coach.

“One of us is insane, and I don’t think it’s me,” she told him.

While sports dominated his work and personal time, Larry put countless miles on his legs, running in the hills and mountains around his home of nearly 40 years in Monroe. He ran when it was hot, cold, raining or snowing. He ran when he felt good, and he ran with a boot on his leg after suffering a stress fracture. A cold or flu never served as an excuse.

“You’ve got to sweat it out,” he used to say, after often adding a mile or two when under the weather.

He typically ran 5 miles per day until slowing to a 3-mile walk in his eighties. He continued to talk with Arnold and others long after retirement about the thousands of games and people he wrote about during his career.

“He was such a great storyteller,” Arnold said. “He loved to tell the stories of these athletes and these teams.

“Whether it was in the Seahawks locker room or the Mariners locker room for the 2001 playoffs or a club runner somewhere up in the mountains around Monroe, he did it with a passion.”