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Henry, Donald W.

Donald W. Henry U.S. Navy WWII
Donald W. Henry U.S. Navy WWII
 
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Date of Birth: 2/1/1917
Died On: 4/10/2010
Street Address: Rye Methodist Church
Service Number: 403-91-88
Branch of Service: U.S. Navy-WWII


Veteran Code: USN-92


BIOGRAPHY Extended Information
 
Donald Wallace Henry

Donald Wallace Henry was born on February 1, 1917, in Brooklyn, New York, to Louise Mildred Tschetter, age 24, and John Robertson Henry, age 48. He had two sisters Eloise and Margaret and a brother John R. and in Rye his family lived at Rye Methodist Church where his father was pastor.

Donald graduated from Andover School in 1935 and from Yale University in 1939 and Yale Law School in 1942. He was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon and Elihu.

Donald served as an officer in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He attended Reserve Midshipmen School, Northwestern University, Chicago, Il.

He served overseas in a Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron. He was severely wounded in the invasion of Sicily and it took months of recovery at St. Albans Hospital, Long Island

Lieut, j. g. Donald W. Henry is still in the Naval Hospital at St. Albans, L. I. , having been wounded in Sicily four months ago while in command of a P. T. boat.
Friday, December 3, 1943 THE RYE CHRONICLE PAGE NINE


After his recovery and he married Jean Van Sinderen on March 16, 1944, in New York City, New York. They had four children together.

In 1950 Donald and his family were living in Middletown, CT and he was a partner in his own Law Firm, Gager, Henry and Narkis. He was a very successful attorney and chairman of the board of Colonial Bancorp, Inc.

Donald began mountain climbing at age 63 after years of observing the sport during skiing trips. His wife and four adult children had always been supportive of his late start in the sport. His first climb was to the top of the Matterhorn in Switzerland.

There is a world of stark and glittering beauty in a region so remote only a few will ever see it, a world where the summer sun never sets and the clouds touch the ground. This is the world Donald W. Henry saw on his eight-day ascent to the summit of Mount McKinley in July,1988 after he completed his record-setting climb.

For at age 71, Henry was the oldest person on record to have climbed to the top of the 20,320-foot-high Alaskan mountain since it was first scaled in 1913. The oldest climber before Donald to scale North America's highest mountain was 68:

Seated in his Waterbury law office, surrounded by color photographs of his mountaineering expeditions into Tibet and China, Henry said he never expected the attention that surrounded his climb. "I can't believe the interest that has been shown," said the soft-spoken, understated Middlebury resident. "It's astonishing to me."

Donald Wallace Henry died on April 10, 2010, in Middlebury, Connecticut, at the age of 93, and was buried there.

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