On a bluebird day this past August, I ran into John Hendrickson, Marylou Whitney’s third husband, after several years of not seeing him. He was jogging down North Broadway with a little white poodle in a stroller; I was there for a Sunday Stroll tour of historic homes. He gave me a friendly hug and introduced Lu Lu, and I snapped a quick photo of them on my phone before he jogged on.
A week later, while on another tour—this one of Greenridge Cemetery—I sat down on one of the four curved, granite benches at the Whitney family plot. It’s a surprisingly welcoming space, with bronze headstones, a bronze angel as tall as me and a perimeter of rose bushes and hydrangeas. The gravesite was designed by Cornelius Vanderbilt “Sonny” Whitney, Marylou’s second husband, when they were both alive. Sonny and Marylou are buried there, along with their longtime friend, Ed Lewi, whose headstone is engraved with his mantra: “If it’s not fun, don’t do it.”
The next day—Monday, August 19, 2024—the Saratoga community was shocked and saddened to hear that John had died of cardiac arrest at the age of 59. He is now buried to the left of Marylou in that Greenridge Cemetery plot beneath a headstone that will bear a mantra of his own: “A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.”
John, an Alaska native, lit many candles during his time in Saratoga. In 2001, he and Marylou funded the $4.2 million Whitney-Hendrickson Cardiac Catheterization Center at Saratoga Hospital. In 2017, he became chairman of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, where he spearheaded a $20 million capital campaign to develop the state-of-the-art Hall of Fame as well as the museum’s popular online Foal Patrol project. And in 2023, he funded the construction of a free health clinic for backstretch workers. “He had the heart the size of a lion,” his brother, Ed, said in his eulogy.
But perhaps nearest and dearest to John’s heart was the backstretch appreciation program he and Marylou founded in 2008 that hosts dinners, bingo nights and other programs for members of the backstretch community and their families. Longtime track announcer Tom Durkin called out the bingo numbers back when the events were hosted in a tent; now they’re held—fittingly—in the Marylou Whitney Pavilion. Even after Marylou’s death in 2019, John never missed a Wednesday bingo night or Sunday family dinner.
“I saw him the day he died,” backstretch worker Enzo Martinez told BloodHorse reporter Teresa Genaro at the celebration of life held for John at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame on August 30. “He passed away on my birthday, and then two days later at the backstretch bingo game, I won a couple of prizes. I felt like it was him giving them to me.” Pointing to the sky, his eyes moist, he told Genaro: “I appreciate everything that Marylou and John did.”
In fact, bingo night was on John’s mind the day he died.
“Every morning he came to the house with Dunkin’ Donuts or a hot breakfast to walk the dogs,” says Maureen Lewi, the widow of public relations legend Ed Lewi and a longtime friend of John’s. The morning of August 19 was no different; Maureen and John talked about plans for John’s upcoming 60th birthday before he left to pick up money vouchers from the Saratoga Casino—prizes for that week’s bingo night. (In the early days of the backstretch appreciation program, he and Ed would purchase TVs, bikes and other prizes; when lugging bikes around got old, they switched over to giving money as prizes instead.)
Later that day, Maureen got a call from the Cady Hill staff. John had been taken by ambulance to Saratoga Hospital. “I got to the emergency room, and they were doing chest compressions,” Maureen continues. “I held his hand and rubbed his arm and head. I knew he was gone.”
John and Maureen’s friendship dates back to when Marylou and John married in 1997. “The four of us went on lots of cruises together,” Maureen says. “Ed and I even went with them on their honeymoon.” In one of many zany Christmas cards John created while Marylou was alive, the four friends are seen at Florida’s Longboat Key Club wearing Rasta hats.
When Ed died in 2015, John was right there with Maureen, and they were both by Marylou’s side when she passed in 2019. “We’ve always been there for each other in good times and bad,” says Maureen. “I never thought he would go before me. His was a generous and wonderful life. I’m very blessed.”
I first met John at a Rotary Club meeting shortly after he and Marylou Whitney tied the knot on a mountaintop in Alaska. After getting engaged at Buckingham Palace and dining with the royal family, the luncheon at Joe Collins’ Restaurant on South Broadway must have been a let-down, especially if he ordered the meatloaf.
John was there with Marylou, who was receiving a community service award. Everyone always loved to see Marylou, but it was her new hubby, nearly 40 years her junior, that we all wanted to check out.
After Marylou graciously accepted her accolades, John got up to speak. He told us he had good news. “We’re expecting,” John said, with an impish grin. Jaws dropped and eyebrows were raised at the biology of it all. After a long pause, he clarified: “We just bought a new puppy.”
Their age difference never seemed to bother John. On a 1989 episode of Oprah that featured “Alaskan Men,” he introduced himself: “I’m John Hendrickson, and I’m looking for a woman who isn’t afraid to succeed.” Six years later, he found her.
“She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen,” John told a reporter about the first time he met Marylou. “I was driving [a] car and she was sitting in the backseat…I kept looking at her in the rear view mirror. I almost drove off the road a few times.”
When Marylou went on an expedition to the South Pole soon after, she wrote John two love letters a day. After a two-year courtship—”I’m a formal guy who wants to get down on one knee and buy that five-carat diamond I can’t afford,” he said—he popped the question.
Of my countless run-ins with the King and Queen of Saratoga over their 22 years of marriage, one memory sticks out. It was June 6, 2003, Whitney Stables’ Bird Town was competing in the Belmont Acorn Stakes, and it was my dad’s 80th birthday.
Bird Town was first to cross the finish line, and John and Marylou celebrated with Champagne in the Belmont Club House. I just followed the crowd.
We often called my father “Bird Man,” because he loved feeding birds; I still have his custom-built, squirrel-proof feeder in my yard. During the post-race celebration, I asked Marylou if she’d wish my dad a happy birthday. “Mr. Bird?” she said with her patrician voice as she held my cell phone. After her birthday wish, she handed the phone to John, who handed it back to me. “He hung up,” John said. My father, a quiet, self-effacing man, must have been mortified that I’d asked them to call him, but maybe secretly pleased. That they were so willing to take a moment out of their own celebration to help celebrate someone else speaks volumes to the type of people John and Marylou were.
Maureen is still adjusting to life without her husband and dear friends. “How dare you guys go and leave me here!” she says, only half-joking. She plans to join John, Marylou and Ed in the Whitney plot when her time comes: “I’ll be right next to Ed,” she says. Until then, she’ll remember the good times that were had. “John helped me with pretty much everything, from advice to making sure I ate wholesome dinners,” she says. “We frequented Morrissey’s often because we could bring our dogs.”
Speaking of Lu Lu, that white puffball I met on North Broadway now lives with Maureen. “John doesn’t have family here,” she says. But love makes a family, and John Hendrickson was certainly well-loved—by Maureen, by Marylou and by the people of the city he called home.