Students, teachers, and coaches gathered at Dunwoody High School’s athletic fields on a misty Nov. 4 night to dedicate a memorial to cross-country coach and science teacher Brad Hendrickson, who died in 2022 of pancreatic cancer.
Hendrickson, who graduated from Dunwoody in 1997 and taught there from 2007 to 2022, was lauded for his empathy, humility, and passion to make others around him better athletes, students, and people.
DHS Assistant Principal Andy Jameson said Hendrickson “never gave up and he never surrendered.”
Though gravely ill, Hendrickson worked up until two days before his death, a tribute to his dedication to the profession, speakers said.
Others talked about how Hendrickson elevated everyone around him in large and small ways, whether it was popping out from behind a tree to encourage a runner during the long, bleak stretches of a race, or explaining a difficult chemistry concept.
His widow, Jeanne Hendrickson, said the memorial, which features a bronzed pair of her husband’s tennis shoes, is something that he never would have imagined for himself.
She encouraged attendees, which numbered about 100, to “think of the goodness of Brad and the good you could be to others.”
Speakers recalled one of Hendrickson’s favorite quotes by John Wesley and encouraged others to live by it – “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”
