Jeff Henson (pictured middle) and his children Brittany, Zoe and Nicholas unveil a bench to honour Jennifer Henson at Derek Taylor Public School. Photo Credit: Shane Clausing

By Shane Clausing

Jennifer Henson

Bench unveiled at Derek Taylor Public School to honour late Jennifer Henson

Sep 17, 2021 | 5:19 PM

A new bench was unveiled next to the playground at Derek Taylor Public School on September 17, to remember and honour the legacy of former Education Assistant (EA) Jennifer Henson.

Jen as she is known by family and friends worked at Derek Taylor School as an EA from 2016-19.

She had to step down from teaching for the 2019-20 school year because of health issues and passed away from kidney failure and diabetes at the age of 42 in January 2021.

Shortly after her passing, her husband Jeff, along with the help of the Community Foundation of Northwestern Alberta and others, decided to raise funds for a memorial bench and plaque to be installed in Jen’s memory at the school where she worked.

The bench was placed right across from the school playground, overlooking a picnic table where Jen and her colleagues would gather to have lunch when it was nice outside.

With the bench now placed firmly at the school, Jeff hopes it can help teach people about Jen’s lasting legacy.

“To finally see it come to reality is so incredible. Every part of it is Jen, like her favourite saying on there, her favourite flower there and the angel image,” he said.

“She’d be a little embarrassed that we’re paying so much attention to her like this, but at the same time I know she’d be really proud of this bench.”

Jeff added they decided to place the bench at the school because she helped have a big impact on the lives of so many kids.

With the bench now complete, Jeff’s next focus will be to create an endowment fund to promote education regarding kidney disease and peritoneal dialysis treatments in Grande Prairie. It’s something that personally affected him and his family.

“The next step now is developing an endowment fund in Jen’s name. Once we have enough money raised for that, we’ll start the conversations on how that’s going to look. Ideally, I’d like it to be somewhere in the area of education and training opportunities for local healthcare and homecare providers in the area of peritoneal dialysis,” he explained.

“There’s no clinic of that here in Grande Prairie, so I basically had to stay home away from work and give Jen her treatments for the dialysis four times a day.”

While Jeff was able to stay at home with Jen and care for her while she was sick, he acknowledges there are lots of families out there who cannot afford to do that.

That is why he wants to help start up any potential training opportunities in the area of peritoneal dialysis.

“So, to have some type of training where medical professionals can come into the house and help a person with dialysis treatments is really important to me. I don’t want to have to see another family go through what Jen and I had to go through with regards to that and that’s really the driving force behind getting this endowment fund in Jen’s name started.”

You can help donate and learn more about the endowment page on their Facebook page.

Jeff Henson is an employee of EverythingGP.