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A S C E N TTHE BIOGRAPHY OF JOHN S. HENDERSON

Action is everything.For 44-year-old John Henderson, action is everything. Like many entrepreneurial-minded individuals, Henderson believes that the best ideas are those that can be implemented and executed—and the faster the execution, the better. This mentality drives him and has always been a key factor in building his financial and career success.

In 2009, at age 34, Henderson had already accomplished more than many of his peers. That was the year Henderson was hit, and nearly killed, by a tour bus.

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John S. Henderson grew up outside of Boston in Hanover, Massachusetts, in a blue-collar atmosphere that reflected the work ethic of his Scottish-Irish heritage. Money was perpetually tight, and he started working side jobs at 12 years old, mostly in landscaping and construction. This would continue through college.

His father, both a science teacher and sculptor, imbued him with the attitude that anything can be learned with the right research and questioning. His mother, who gardened vegetables, cooked from scratch and sewed most of their clothes, ran a cosmetics business from the house. She instilled Henderson with a sense of style, but more importantly, a social ability that he leveraged as a popular kid at school, and to which, years later, he attributed his success in connecting with people of all backgrounds.

From a young age, Henderson excelled in sports, and he went on to play soccer at Ithaca College, where he received a tuition scholarship. He decided to pursue architecture, until his father persuaded him that a science degree would offer better career opportunities. So, Henderson honed into his already inquisitive and deductive mindset, graduated with a degree in biochemistry, and continued to do research in the university laboratories at Harvard and Columbia.

But with such social predisposition, Henderson knew that a science lab was not his life’s calling. A more extreme environment captured his attention: the military. He completed Officer Training School in Yorktown, Virginia at the top

of his class, became a Navy Dive Officer in the Coast Guard and was stationed in Hawaii.

More than once, this choice of occupation put his life in danger. But the military solidified the skills that had both brought him thus far and would also launch him forward: leadership, ultimate organization and quick decision making in the midst of chaos. He also learned the 6 Ps—proper planning prevents piss-poor performance, which he would live by, but come to more intimately understand years later from a wheel chair.

As it does to many, Hawaii captured Henderson’s heart. In 2000, he resigned from the Coast Guard and landed a job in medical sales with TAP Pharmaceuticals. He excelled, becoming a top performer and then regional trainer. In 2007, he transitioned to medical device sales and began working for Gyrus ACMI, which eventually merged into Olympus America. By 2008, he managed all three of the company’s surgical divisions. Several years later, he started a medical device distributorship company, Minvatech Hawaii, which he still operates today with his wife.

During his time in the Coast Guard, Henderson had also discovered another passion that would guide the next decade of his life: endurance racing.

In 1998, Henderson ran his first marathon: the Honolulu Marathon. The next year, he completed a half-Ironman triathlon. He won Oahu’s 24-hour mountain bike race. He completed four more half-Ironman and three additional Ironman triathlons. The XTERRA World Championship, an off-road triathlon series, ranked him 18th in the world. By the mid-2000s, with over 50 top-three race

Proper planning prevents piss poor

performance.

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placements, he solidified his reputation as one of Hawaii’s best multi-sport athletes.

Endurance racing captivated Henderson on the physical, but also mental level. It allowed him to hone a mindset for which he already had predisposition: focus and determination.

One race tested him to the extreme: the 2003 Maui Adventure Race. Spanning 180 miles and three days, the course, in adventure race fashion, was unmarked, requiring skills not only in mountain biking, paddling, rappelling and running, but also orienteering. It was the most physically arduous and mentally taxing race Henderson had ever been a part of. He loved it.

One year later, so inspired by that experience, Henderson formed Adventure Race Hawaii (ARH) so that he could share the sport of adventure racing with his community.

Henderson spent hours developing and marketing race materials. He organized workshops on rappelling and orienteering. He planned and directed several sprint adventure races. His enthusiasm not only motivated participants, but also rallied volunteers to support the races.

For the more extreme (and there were not many), Henderson set up and guided a 12- and a 24-hour adventure race on Oahu’s North Shore.

Later, he expanded ARH to the corporate world. Leveraging his experience from the Coast Guard Leadership Academy, Henderson developed corporate leadership and team-building events that focused on outdoor experiential learning. He conducted programs for Oahu-based company branches such as American Savings Bank and Price Waterhouse Cooper, and organizations like the East-West Center.

Whether Henderson realized it or not, his natural ability to motivate, coach and lead was in full bloom.

By 2006, Henderson’s attention shifted from high-level racing to coaching. He realized he had a knack for two things: creating training plans that increased speed and endurance, and motivating athletes to push their limits.

On May 2, 2009, Henderson was coaching his girlfriend (now wife) on a four-hour bike ride in preparation for an upcoming half-Ironman race. Midday, as they ascended Pineapple Hill, one of the most popular climbs on Oahu, disaster struck. A 50-passenger tour bus plowed into Henderson from behind, launched him 90 feet and left him and his bike crumpled on the side of the road. The internal injuries nearly killed him on the spot. In the ambulance, the paramedics hollered to the driver to hurry up. In the ER, the trauma team struggled to control the internal hemorrhaging. In a last-ditch effort to save his life, the surgeons sliced open his chest wall between the ribs, performing what’s known as a thoracotomy.

It wouldn’t be until several years later that Henderson truly grasped the sheer wonder of his survival. Back at work in the operating room of a local hospital, Henderson briefly explained the story of his accident to a trauma surgeon. The trauma surgeon looked at him with astonishment and said,

The sheer wonder of his survival

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“You know that less than two percent of people survive a thoracotomy due to blunt trauma?”

The afternoon of the accident, Henderson received 34 units of blood, about three times the amount normally circulating in an adult body. More than 18 hours of surgery were required to address the damage to his liver, colon, spleen, punctured lungs, shattered pelvis and smashed clavicle and scapula. But it was the spinal cord injuries, which included eight vertebrae fractures and required fusion from T2 to L2, that caused the most lasting repercussions.

When Henderson regained consciousness 10 days later, he found himself intubated, braced at the neck and unable to move his left side. But most crushing of all, he found he could neither feel nor move his legs.

Overwhelming devastation set in, but Henderson started to do what came naturally: He set goals. Having always tended toward futuristic thinking, this served him especially well in the accident’s aftermath. His first goal: get extubated. Next, relearn how to breathe and how to swallow. When pneumonia set in, his life continued to hover on uncertainty. The athlete in him fought and clawed.

Four weeks later, though he could barely sit up, he was flown to Craig Hospital, which specializes in spinal cord rehabilitation, in Denver, Colorado. The nurses nicknamed him “the broken man.” If fighting for survival summoned the depths of his strength and willpower, the months and years to follow would require even more.

Upon returning home to Hawaii, harsh realities set in. In a familiar place, it was a new life. Now, confined to a wheel chair, Henderson needed a ramp to get into his house, a sink he could roll up to, a shower he could sit in. He was so weak he had straps attached to the bed frame so that he could pull himself upright each morning. On many days, as he sat and stared at the glorious Waianae mountain range where he used to run, bike and explore, he was overtaken with grief. Putting the pieces of life back together would be the most grueling endurance event he hadn’t signed up for. Henderson knew that reclaiming his identity as an athlete would take time. But he knew he could get back another

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important piece of his life more quickly: work. (The mountain of medical bills was another driving factor.)

Despite a medical leave of absence, Henderson convinced his doctors to sign off and by the end of 2010, he was back working in the very OR that had saved his life. Just now, instead of walking, he rolled on wheels.

Mostly, Henderson felt consumed by a desire to regain physical strength. He approached this goal in the same, matter-of-fact way he had approached training for a triathlon—by setting up a training program and a schedule.

Odd as it sounds, Henderson felt lucky. Despite his injuries, he had regained some feeling and a small amount of movement in his legs (his right more than his left). His diagnosis of T12D incomplete (meaning his spinal cord was not severed), dangled before him the hope that, maybe one day, he could walk again. He recruited friends and family for help, got the advice and guidance of physical therapists and athletic trainers. He had a wooden platform built with parallel bars, so he could practice standing on his own.

Henderson poured his time, money and heart into training his body to walk. He attended a gaiting program at Craig Hospital, the same spinal cord rehabilitation center he went to after the accident. He completed a custom, five-day physical therapy program at Project Walk in San Diego, California. But as his progress leveled, so too did his motivation. He began to see walking (which he did on shaky legs with a walker) as inefficient and hazardous. Reality overcame him: nerve damage does not recover like muscle damage. The pace of recovery, despite all his best effort, was and would continue to be unpredictable.

A shift occurred in Henderson’s psyche. He was fed up with the goal of walking; fed up with relying on so many different people for help; fed up with driving so hard and not producing results. His goals of walking and returning to endurance athletics in a wheel chair seemed far-fetched. He started to question whether he could ever really enjoy athletics again. Inching along a paved road on a three-wheel contraption just wasn’t that exciting; Henderson longed to be on the trails and in the mountains. But that dream was torture. And so, he decided to let it go.

Gradually, Henderson’s burgeoning entrepreneurial interests ebbed away any time for workouts and physical therapy. But it seemed ok; at least he could get back to working independently, on his schedule and with more

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Overcoming obstacles. Getting back up. Embracing change.

predictable results. Over the next few years, Henderson delved into projects and new businesses with fervor and gregarious display. But behind closed doors, he suffered depression, addiction and PTSD. A deep emotional grief smoldered inside. He couldn’t hide the weight gain, which eventually reached an uncomfortable 40 pounds. His physical movement steadily decreased, and he was overcome with panic and anxiety more and more often. Yet perhaps because of his tremendous pain threshold, likely instilled from years of endurance racing and Navy Dive School, Henderson continued to charge ahead. He embraced the fact that suffering was just a part of this new life.

Even though Henderson gave up on participating in athletic events, he felt compelled to be involved in them. So, he rekindled Adventure Race Hawaii and created a nighttime running series called NiteRun on the assumption that an evening event would be a fun change from the typical early morning races.

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From 2013 to 2015, he organized and directed five NiteRuns across Oahu, each time donating the profits to a different charity.

Henderson also started Holomua On Wheels, with the objective of increasing awareness of adaptive sports in Hawaii. Around the same time, he began taking lessons in adaptive skiing at Snow Basin in Utah. In the process of examining adaptive sports opportunities, he began working with the nonprofit Ogden Valley Adaptive Sports, also in Utah, and eventually became its president.

Henderson knew he needed sports in his life, but he was approaching them from the sidelines. Lingering dissatisfaction pervaded his being, although he rarely discussed it. Compounding matters, NiteRun events did not take off in popularity as he had hoped, and the market for Holomua On Wheels proved miniscule. Henderson was spending significant time trying to help others, but hindsight tells that this was merely an attempt to assuage his own pain.

Amidst the frustrations, one business venture stood out: real estate and construction projects. Early into his recovery, Henderson formed two real estate partnerships under which he acquired and gradually developed

properties in Hawaii and in Utah. Construction (in various forms) had been part of his life since childhood, but now he felt even more drawn to it. He felt inspired by the process of creating through building, and deeply rewarded by the results.

In December 2015, Henderson’s life converged. He bought an eight-acre lot on Oahu. Accessible only by a jeep road, the lot was overgrown, dense with jungle, with neither infrastructure nor access to utilities. Even to the most able of bodies, the area presented deterrent after deterrent, but for a guy in a wheel chair, some would say impossibilities.

Whether conscious or subconscious, Henderson knew he needed a challenge like this. When his wife said, “Are you really sure about this?”, he closed the deal that afternoon. He was sure. Henderson had tried hard to quell his yearning to get back into the dirt. But this property rekindled the dream—maybe he could create his own accessible dirt oasis.

The project, which would become Ryson Ranch, resulted in much more than a dirt oasis. It also tested him on levels he hadn’t anticipated.

From a construction stand point, the remote location created countless logistical challenges. Material deliveries could not exceed 20 feet due to the radius of the access road; inclement weather turned everything into a muddy mess; the topography made soil erosion constant; and keeping to the goal of sustainability was like ruminating over a jigsaw puzzle. Getting anything done on a timetable mandated big picture planning and creativity—abilities at which Henderson excelled.

But the hardest battles Henderson had to overcome were emotional.

To accomplish the project, Henderson had to push through his fear of getting stuck in the mud and his anxiety about being alone. Sometimes, his ideas

The hardest battles to overcome

were emotional.

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for the project didn’t work. He had to learn to accept these failures and try different ways. By day, he was learning to push his chair through uneven, rocky, dirt terrain, and up hillsides. By night, he was drawing and sketching plans, and finalizing punch lists for the days and months ahead. Gradually, Henderson became more and more active, gaining strength and confidence and losing weight. But more importantly, by being outside in the dirt, surrounded by nature, he was reconnecting to a spirit that he had lost on that day in 2009 when he got hit by the bus.

Henderson transformed physically and emotionally over the course of the project, which spanned two and a half years. The construction results were equally impressive: a jungle oasis with nonpermanent structures made out of containers , propane and solar power, potable well water, gravity-fed irrigation and, likely unnoticeable to the average visitor, wheel chair accessibility.

For Henderson, Ryson Ranch was a deeply personal journey that represents overcoming obstacles, falling and getting back up and embracing change. When he shares the space with others, he hopes that they, too, feel motivated, inspired and reconnected to their inner selves.

Through Ryson Ranch and other projects, Henderson has leveraged what many may perceive as a setback—executing design-build construction from a wheelchair. Where others may have faltered, Henderson has catapulted himself ahead by honing skills in planning (6Ps), by constantly clarifying for a common understanding and by assessing behavior and emotional intelligence to then motivate those with whom he works. Today, these skills are the pillars of Henderson’s ability to produce and deliver.

Presently, John Henderson is a design-build consultant, executive coach and motivational speaker. He is passionate about helping people take action—whether it be action toward a goal or physical action for athletic performance.

Henderson has rekindled his own athletic goals, too. In 2017, he completed two triathlons on Oahu, mountain biked and rock climbed in Colorado, and in October 2018, became the first wheel chair participant in an XTERRA Trail Run race on Maui. He hopes to summit Mauna Loa and Haleakala in the next year, and plans to try his hand at prone paddle boarding.

Henderson is also retackling what at one point seemed impossible—walking. He now approaches it one step at a time, as he tries his best to enjoy the journey.

hendersondbc.com | johnhenderson11@me.com