Every year, Draper City recognizes local heroes who have gone the extra mile to make the city a better place. This year, the award was posthumously given to Jean Hendricksen who passed away in August at the age of 96 after living in Draper more than 70 years.

“A special vibrancy exists within a community when its residents go the extra mile in service,” Mayor Troy Walker read in the proclamation. Walker said he first met Hendricksen years ago when he was knocking on doors campaigning. “She certainly was exemplary of the Extra Mile Foundation in everything she did. We will miss her,” he said.

Hendricksen’s daughter, Jenny Haase, said her mother is her “favorite subject” to talk about. She described her thought process upon hearing Hendricksen had received this special recognition. “I thought, ‘I can’t wait to tell my mom’ and then thought, ‘wait, I can’t.’ I’m very honored her legacy continues,” Haase said. 

 Jenny Haase, holding a picture of her mother Jean Hendricksen, is congratulated by Councilmember Tasha Lowery while Councilmember Fred Lowry congratulates her brother Carl Hendricksen on their mother’s special award. (Mimi Darley Dutton/City Journals)

Hendricksen, along with two other retired teachers, co-founded the Draper Visual Arts Foundation (DVAF). Hendricksen wrote the history of the DVAF on the foundation’s website, dating back to the 1920s when Reid Beck was principal of the old Draper Park School, a combined elementary and junior high and the structure that still stands on the corner of Fort Street and Pioneer Road. Beck, an amateur artist himself, asked teachers and students to help him bring art into the rural community of Draper. Children donated coins to purchase one piece of art each year starting in 1926, even during The Great Depression. 

“The crown jewel, a painting of Ichabod Crane, done by Norman Rockwell, was added to the collection in 1953. When Mr. Rockwell found that it was children who wanted to buy his painting, he lowered his asking price from $1,200 to $800,” Hendricksen wrote. (Haase said the last appraisal for that Rockwell painting was $2 million.)

In time, the old school closed, Draper Elementary was built, and junior high students were sent to Sandy. “The collection was boxed up until appropriate places could be found…no special care had been given to them during all those years,” Hendricksen wrote. 

Hulda Crossgrove had been a first-year teacher at the school in 1926. In 1992, Crossgrove approached Hendricksen and Mary Sjoblom, both of whom had been students and teachers at the old school, about what could be done to preserve the art collection which had become property of the Jordan School District (JSD). The three women met with the JSD superintendent who said the District didn’t have funds to help, but he welcomed them to find a solution. 

“So our work started,” Hendricksen wrote. They gathered donations and free legal advice, volunteers joined the board, and the foundation morphed into what it is today. “The DVAF formed as a group dedicated to preserving an art collection purchased one piece at a time by students in Draper….We grew into an organization that promotes art education and creation in our city,” the website says. In addition to preserving and properly maintaining the art collection, the group hosts an annual art contest for local high school seniors with cash awards ranging from $100 to $1,000. DVAF also hosts Art in the Barn every summer so area artists can sell their works. 

In 2000, Emily Dunn (nee Kennard) won the art scholar competition grand prize. She went on to major in art at BYU and worked for Disney. Dunn returned to Draper to raise her children, became a board member of DVAF, and got to know Hendricksen. “She was so polite and kind, and yet a powerful force for good. It’s so encouraging to have witnessed what she accomplished through steady effort. Her legacy is creating space for the community, young and old, to appreciate and celebrate art. She started the engine and she was always there making sure it continued,” Dunn said. 

Jean Hendricksen’s children in front of one of the pieces of art acquired and maintained by the Draper Visual Arts Foundation which Hendricksen helped to establish. L-R are Carl Hendricksen, Scott Hendricksen and Jenny Haase. (Mimi Darley Dutton/City Journals)

 Retired science teacher, former UEA president, and Draper resident Lowell Baum met Hendricksen 25 years ago when he joined DVAF and she was serving as president. “I really respected her and decided I would stay with the foundation,” he said. He remembers her fondly as a person with a passion for life, teaching and a devotion to art. Baum currently serves as president and credits the board for being “tremendous people.” He’s also fulfilling a promise he made to Hendricksen. “Shortly before she died, she made me promise we would carry on the mission of the foundation. I promised I would because she was a great, great person,” he said. 

Carrying on the family tradition, Haase and her two daughters serve on the DVAF. According to Haase, when Hendricksen served as DVAF assistant secretary at age 90, she didn’t take notes during the meeting. Instead, she listened, and after the meeting ended, she went to her computer to type the notes from memory. “Pretty remarkable,” Haase said. 

For Hendricksen’s 91st birthday, her family asked people to do acts of kindness in her honor. The ever-polite Hendricksen wanted to do the same number of acts of kindness in return for all those that had been done in her honor, and this was during Covid when PPE was hard to come by. “So she sewed 100 masks. She was a great seamstress but it was hard for her to sew with her gnarled fingers,” Haase said. And she didn’t stop there. Hendricksen also baked numerous loaves of homemade bread during Covid which she gave to others.

Haase told a “full circle” story about her mother and Beck, whose art collection she dedicated her life to preserving. As a young girl, Hendricksen and her twin sister were students at the Old Park School during Beck’s time as principal. One day, Beck bumped into the twins in the hall during their eighth-grade year. He engaged them in conversation but he noticed it was Hendricksen’s twin sister who did all the talking. Beck decided it would be wise to separate the twins by assigning them to different classrooms starting their ninth-grade year. “She was incredibly shy and her ninth-grade year was really difficult for her. She was afraid of speaking publicly. But she credits him with helping her to find her voice. In later years she’d say she hoped she did him proud,” Haase said.

Like Beck, Hendricksen made a lasting mark on Draper. She lived in the community for seven decades and collected many accolades along the way, including 2017 Draper Citizen of the Year. 

“She is an inspiration showing that you can make a huge, positive difference in your community no matter what age you are,” said Katherine Weinstein, a DVAF member.