Los
Angeles County
Biographies
JOSEPH B.
HENDERSON
When Joseph B.
Henderson was sixty-nine years old in 1951, he and Mrs. Henderson, on a trip to
Santa Cruz for a friend’s funeral, miraculously escaped death when they were
thrown clear of their car as it fell forty-five feet after going off the
highway in a construction area near Buellton. Both seriously injured, their lives hung in
the balance for several days, but Mrs. Henderson recovered fully, due to
masterful orthopedic surgery, and Mr. Henderson is almost perfectly recovered
and is active today in his insurance business, the firm of Henderson, West and
Owens at 1004 East Main Street in Alhambra.
The oldest locally owned insurance company in the area; it is now one of
the largest general insurance offices in the San Gabriel Valley, employing
eighteen people. When Mr. Henderson came
to Alhambra in 1926 he established the J. B. Henderson Insurance Agency at 39 South Garfield.
Twelve years ago he went into partnership with John P. West, who was
vice president in charge of the St. Louis office of the Kemper Insurance
Companies, and Robert D. Owens, who had been an automobile dealer in Texas
following many years with insurance companies.
Mr. Henderson is a member of the local, state, and national insurance
associations.
Born in Columbus, Kansas, on January
25, 1882, Joseph Henderson is the son of William Wilson Henderson, of South
Carolina and Indiana, a flour miller and retail grocer, and Elizabeth P.
(Henley) Henderson of North Carolina.
Both Joseph Henderson’s brother and sister are deceased. He attended elementary and high school in his
home town and graduated from Brown’s Business College in Kansas City, Missouri.
From 1904 to 1911 Mr. Henderson had
a small bank in Crowder, Oklahoma. He
was secretary-treasurer of the Midwest Mutual Insurance Company in Wichita,
Kansas, for seven years before coming to California in 1923.
Past president of the Alhambra Lions
Club which was founded in 1927, Mr. Henderson was its second president in
1928-1929. A charter member of the Lions
Club in Wichita, he is also a charter member in Alhambra and the oldest Lion in
that club. He has been a member of the
Alhambra Elks Lodge Number 1328 for thirty-three years and is a past member of
the Knights of Pythias in Alhambra. He
was Chancellor Commander in that organization in Columbus, Kansas.
Mr. Henderson was married to the
former Miss Frances Hightower in Crowder, Oklahoma. Mrs. Henderson was born in Shelby County,
Missouri, and is active in church work at the Alhambra Friends Community
Church. The Henderson’s have two
daughters. Mrs. Eugene F. (Mary
Elizabeth) Van Winkle was born on August 6, 1914, and is a graduate of Alhambra
High School and the University of Southern California. She lives in Altadena with her husband Eugene
(Rip) Van Winkle, a chemist, and their two children, Susan, born in 1949, and
Peter, born in 1961. Mrs. John F.
(Harriet Robb) Shea was born on January 21, 1919, graduated from Alhambra High
School and attended Pasadena Junior College.
She lives in Riverside with her husband, John F. Shea, an electronics
engineer, and president of Subminiature Instrument Corp., and their two
children, Christine, born in 1951, and Michael, born in 1953.
The survivor of several serious
accidents in his lifetime, Mr. Henderson tells, with his lively humor, of the
time he escaped injury when the Lions Club was planting pyracantha bushes along
the Southern Pacific Railway and he was thrown off the back of a truck which stopped
suddenly. Although he landed flat on his
back on the pavement, Mr. Henderson avoided a possibly fatal blow on the head
by holding on to the cans of pyracantha bushes, thus keeping his head up.
Transcribed
by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Historical Volume &
Reference Works Including Alhambra, Monterey Park, Rosemead, San Gabriel &
Temple City, by Robert P. Studer, Pages 360-361,
Historical Publ., Los Angeles, California.
1962.
© 2012 V.
Gerald Iaquinta.
GOLDEN NUGGET'S LOS ANGELES
BIOGRAPHIES