NEWS

 

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the Town of Davidson held its annual ceremony honoring the year’s G. Jackson Burney Community Service Award recipient. This was the first Burney ceremony held at the new Town Hall and Community Center auditorium. The ceremony was followed by breakfast treats in the preserved classroom. Music presented by the Moravian Brass Band began the ceremony, and Mayor Knox greeted the honoree and citizens in attendance. Margo Williams gave a bit of history about Jack Burney, that the award was named for him due to his dedicated and creative service to Davidson. Williams then read the citation about this year’s award recipient, Lynn Hennighausen, and her own creative and dedicated service to our town. Karen Toney, last year’s recipient, spoke about what the award had meant to her and described the piece she created for Hennighausen, made out of beautiful striated oak and topped by a star made of wood that she salvaged from the Summit Coffee renovation.

Photos of the ceremony can be found at this link. Additionally, the livestreamed video from the ceremony can be found on the News of Davidson Facebook page.

The following is the citation written about Lynn Burke Hennighausen:

Growing up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Lynn and her family have football and other sports as part of their culture. The Packers are the only community-owned team in the NFL, and Lynn and her siblings all share in a part of the team. Her uncle was even Vince Lombardi’s chaplain! This pride and enthusiasm for sports and the importance of teams have so imbued Lynn that it became her life’s work.

A talented sportswoman, Lynn played volleyball, softball, and threw discus in high school. She received a scholarship to play volleyball and softball at Loras College, a small Catholic school in Dubuque, Iowa. This gave her the opportunity to explore new places and build a life around teamwork. The scholarship helped her feel confident and open to new experiences, things that she has continued to seek in her adult life. The biggest cultures where she felt she belonged all centered around sports. These were her safe places, where she felt most seen and connected.

In addition to playing college sports, she majored in French and business, and discovered that she loves language, feeling that languages connect you to other people and to the world beyond yourself. After graduation, Lynn returned to Green Bay briefly before attending the University of Wisconsin at Madison where she earned her master’s degree in exercise physiology. More importantly, it was there she met her husband, Rick, whom she calls her “absolute rock.” It didn’t hurt that he had a nice car and could take her out to dinner every now and then. They now have been married for 34 years.

Lynn and Rick remained in Madison, where their oldest son, C.J., was born. They then moved to the Twin Cities, living outside of St. Paul. There they had their two other children, son Rick and daughter Sydney. Husband Rick’s engineering work saw him traveling over 100 days a year, and Lynn began to feel that the family needed to put down roots somewhere else so that Rick could be home more. She decided that she had one more move in her.

Happily for our town, Lynn and her family found Davidson. She was looking for houses in Davidson on September 11, 2001, when Rick was on the last flight that landed that day in Charlotte. When she saw him walk off the plane, after she plowed through security, she was filled with relief and with the knowledge that Davidson would be their home from now on.

As a young person, Lynn sought community, which she feels she found in abundance in Davidson. Here, she feels rooted and grounded in a place that values her and is open to her contributions. They now live off Shearer Road on four acres that she considers her place of perfect peace.

She remembers well that C.J. was in the third grade when they moved to Davidson, and Lynn and Rick worried about C.J. finding his footing in a new school. His teacher, Rosemary Klein, made him feel special in the combined grades three and four classroom. She taught Lynn a valuable lesson when C.J. came home from school with an uncharacteristically bad grade. She took C.J. back to the school and talked to Rosemary about how C.J. could improve upon this. Rosemary’s wisdom was to “let him fail here. It is one of the safest places to fail, and it allows him to find his own solutions.” This wisdom has stayed with Lynn all these years, that Davidson is a safe place to grow and learn and fail and learn more.

All three of their children found community at Davidson Elementary School – there’s that word again. Community. Lynn looked for ways to build her own community and soon found it at the elementary school. When Rick was in kindergarten, several of the children in his class were “too busy.” Consequently, they lost their recess time, which deeply concerned Lynn with her knowledge of exercise and the importance of movement for kids. She had a conversation with Mr. Rabb, the PE teacher, and together in the early 2000s, they started Tigers on the Prowl. They pulled together other parents, and it became an indelible part of the school day, a way for kids to be active at whatever level worked for them.

They walked, ran, and counted laps to achieve miles. Some teachers even let their students out for ten-minute breaks to get in a few more laps. At a count of 26.2 miles, a marathon, students were rewarded with things like key rings and t-shirts. What Lynn and others realized was that the real reward was the sense of accomplishment the students felt when they achieved a marathon, not to mention getting in all that great movement.

As Tigers on the Prowl grew, classes competed with each other. At the year’s kick-off, each class would come out separately, and what Lynn called “Town Heroes” – college athletes, fire, police, leaders in the community – would join them and talk about the importance of being active.

With her three children now grown and living their own adult lives, Lynn has continued to make those contributions to the community. One of Lynn’s gifts is that she sees how we can work together and create solutions that make things better. She continually asks, how do we come together as human beings to find solutions? She looks for what unites, rather than divides, us.

She feels that we are all in this life together, no matter our religious affiliations, backgrounds, and differences, and that we have an obligation to shine a light in the dark places. She has sought people who help propel her forward, mentors in this community who are fearless in taking steps, even when it is hard – people like Marcia Webster, Tom Gettleman, Georgia Harris, and John Woods, among many others.

In 2012, 17-year-old Jocelyn Desmond died by suicide, one of five people who died by suicide that year in our town. Under Mayor Woods, the Town Board met to determine what the town could do in response to these tragedies. Then other people joined in the conversation to create a community response and program to address it. Mayor Woods asked Lisa Hilse and Lynn if they would take the lead in organizing this response. This was a frightening time and there was not a great deal of national conversation about suicide. In Davidson, however, the community that Lynn helped develop created Davidson Lifeline. That initiative, along with the connection Christina Shaul made to Tom Gettleman, the director of Atrium’s new mental health facility, has brought new awareness to the problems our residents face.

Representatives from Atrium Health and Davidson College were already starting to bring together professionals with the community group. The Davidson Lifeline connected with Mental Health America of the Central Carolinas, and they were early adopters of QPR – Question, Persuade, Refer. The QPR mission is to reduce suicidal behaviors and save lives by providing innovative, practical, and proven suicide prevention training.

The Lifeline vision early on was suicide prevention. They focused on mental health first aid. Over time, they created an advisory board that consisted of stakeholders around the region. They were intentional about who would sit at the table. They sought educators, healthcare and mental health professionals, veterans, and older adults. They sought, in a variety of forums, to learn what the community needed and wanted, and they met regularly as a board. When the mental health hospital opened, they held a session there and learned that suicide was a part of many of their lives, and in the true caring they showed to each other, they prepared for the hard work that lay ahead of them.

One of the board members was a police officer who used a waterfall as a metaphor. This metaphor has served Lynn well in her work with Lifeline. If we work at the bottom of a waterfall, we’ll be able to save a few lives. But if we go upstream to provide tools and resiliency, maybe those people won’t go down the waterfall at all. The board then imagined the lives we could save if we found people before they came to the waterfall. The board’s goal is to be a catalyst for change and advocacy and awareness, and Lynn still works with them as a consultant and true believer.

Now, Davidson Lifeline goes to every ninth-grade class in the area to teach QPR. They respond to community issues, host documentaries on mental health, and bring in experts. Coaches, teachers, and community leaders have benefitted from these sessions.

Lynn’s company is Whole Health Sport, and she received funding through a state program begun by Governor Roy Cooper to provide mental health first aid to athletic departments across North Carolina at no cost to the recipients. They worked at Hough High, and in Gaston County, where they recently taught 30 trainers and coaches. Their goal is to reach 700 people between now and June, and anyone who knows Lynn, knows that goal is absolutely achievable.

Sports, mental health, connectivity, and community building have long informed Lynn’s life. Luckily for Davidson, she found our town and dedicated herself to this community in profound ways. From children on a playground who find happiness in exercise to teens and adults who receive loving attention to achieve positive mental health, our community is better and wiser and more generous because of Lynn’s purpose.

Lynn Burke Heninghausen, your community thanks you and is honored to name you the 2023 recipient of the G. Jackson Burney Community Service Award.