Wednesday, July 30, 2003

By Ervin Dyer, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

James Henry, director of the Hill House Association, which provides housing, health, education and welfare services in the central Hill District, died of complications from cancer Saturday at his home in Bethel Park. He was 65.

For 26 years, Mr. Henry steered renters toward homes, found scholarships for children who had thought college was only a dream and guided young parents to services that kept their babies healthy.

The Hill District was a community Mr. Henry knew well.

He grew up in Sugar Top, one of two children whose parents were a physician, James Henry, and a nurse, Jereline.

In the 1960s, he worked as an agent for an insurance company, but the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. changed his life. "I felt I had more to offer than just selling life insurance," Mr. Henry once told a reporter as he explained why he went on to join civil rights groups and became active in protests to bring improvements in racial justice.

Mr. Henry quit his job -- taking a $10,000 pay cut -- and went to work for the social agency Community Action Pittsburgh. There he battled poverty, specifically by initiating job-training programming for the unemployed in Garfield.

From there, Mr. Henry served as director of the Kingsley House in East Liberty. In the mid-1970s, crime was high and he tried to turn things around by focusing on youth programming.

However, Mr. Henry is best known for the work he did with the Hill House Association.

When he came on board in 1978, he was the organization's fourth executive director and a prototype of a modern social administrator, said Malik Bankston, executive director of Kingsley Association.

"He was like an icon. He was able to offer flexibility and adaptability to the organizations that had become this sort of one-stop-shop for services," said Bankston.

But it wasn't all nuts-and-bolts social programming. There was a good dose of the arts as well.

Mr. Henry, who performed as a singer and jazz percussionist to put himself through school, helped to initiate Sunday evening jazz at the Hill House's Kaufmann Auditorium. Before that free program ended a few years ago, it drew local and national artists, including Stanley Turrentine.

The place was like a family, said Jean Douglas, Mr. Henry's longtime secretary. When his daughter LeLanie was born, Mr. Henry put a crib in the office and brought his daughter to work.

Mr. Henry had planned to retire from Hill House, formed in 1964 by merging three social service agencies, at the end of August.

A football player at Schenley High School, Mr. Henry served five years in the Navy submarine service, winning notice for meritious service. Afterward, he attended Michigan State University and the University of Pittsburgh, which he graduated from in 1971 with a degree in social psychology. In 1975, he received a master's degree in social work administration from Pitt.

Mr. Henry was a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Association of Black Social Workers. He was a trustee of Carlow College.

In addition to his daughter, LeLanie, Mr. Henry is survived by his wife, LeLanie Jean Wilds Henry; two sons, Allen and James III; and four grandchildren. All reside in Bethel Park.

Visitation will be from noon to 9 p.m. today in St. Benedict the Moor Church, Crawford and Centre avenues, Hill District.

A Mass will be celebrated at 11 a.m. tomorrow in the church. Interment will be in Jefferson Memorial Cemetery.

Contributions can be made to the James F. Henry Jr. Scholarship Fund, c/o the Hill House Association, 1835 Centre Ave, Pittsburgh, 15219.

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