Jerry Henson

Hi, my name is Jerry Henson. I am originally from New Madrid County and grew up around Morehouse and Sikeston.  After graduating from Sikeston Senior High School in 1990, I headed off to Marine Corps bootcamp in San Diego.  I spent five years in the Corps, most of that on the West Coast, but with deployments to Japan, Canada, and Korea. 

After my enlistment ended, I spent two years at San Diego State University, which has a great Classics department, then transferred to Tulane University in New Orleans to finish up undergraduate degrees in Classics and Ancient History.  While at Tulane, I worked as a student archivist at the Amistad Research Center and the Southern Institute for Education and Research.  I also tutored elementary school students as part of the Start the Adventure in Reading (STAIR) program. 

At that time, Tulane was ending its teacher education program, but I was able to minor in education and the coursework included practicums in New Orleans public schools.  Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities was a huge inspiration for me at the time and I had intended to be a career public school teacher, but I never got a call from the New Orleans public schools’ central office after graduation!  My first job out of Tulane was at the Isidore Newman School and I spent the next twenty-some years at the best private schools in New Orleans.  I taught at the high school level, mostly courses in World History, Modern European History, and United States States History, and was a faculty advisor to several student clubs.  The last years I spent in New Orleans were in administration, including stints recruiting and training faculty, writing curriculum, admission, communications, and fundraising. 

In 2022, after spending half of my life in New Orleans, and following through on a promise to myself to start packing after Hurricane Ida, it was time to return home.  I had researched other graduate programs in the region, but SEMO checked all of the boxes.  While my studies in the past have been very specialized and necessarily esoteric, I am excited that SEMO will allow me the opportunity to explore local history while also providing the full scope of coursework for public history and historic preservation.  Having studied and taught the Classics for many years, which in retrospect can sometimes seem elitist and anachronistic, the prospect of studying Public History, which is so dynamic and of-our-times, was the antidote to many of my professional frustrations.    

This first year has been an awakening of sorts.  It took a few weeks to remember what it means to be a student again, after having been on the other side of the desk for decades, but SEMO provided the best-possible situation in terms of coursework, classmates, professors, and advising.  Before attending my first class, I had already been provided with a roadmap for graduation and employment, which was unreal given my experience at Tulane, which was great, but too large to really take a personal interest in individual  student success.  In summary, I would say that SEMO, Cape Girardeau, and the Public History program have all been a perfect fit for me.  

Currently, I am having frequent conversations with myself about whether to take all that I have learned back to the classroom or to seek a career in the educational department of a museum.  A few months ago I was convinced that classroom teaching would stay in my rearview mirror, but lately my thinking is that maybe I just needed a recharge and a revised toolkit, not a complete change.  In the next few months I look forward to some travel, Italy and England are on the agenda for the summer, and doing some more work on my house, a 1950’s Wright-inspired contemporary structure that looks completely out of place in Sikeston!