There are many reasons Gary Henderson, ME’73 and MS CE’81, and his wife, Peggy, are longtime supporters of Missouri S&T. Near the top of that list are the student design teams.

“You watch the news and things don’t look great,” Henderson says. “But you talk to S&T students about their design team project, and the world begins to look much brighter. I really, really like what they’re doing.”

Peggy agrees. “When there’s a university function and the design teams show up with their projects, the passion these students have for what they’re creating is truly inspiring,” she says.

To help ensure that design teams remain a core component of S&T, the couple recently gave $25,000 to establish the Gary and Peggy Henderson Design Center Endowment. They then pledged a gift through their estate of more than $900,000.

Gary grew up in Bowling Green, Missouri, a small community roughly halfway between St. Louis and Hannibal. He arrived in Rolla at the end of the 1960s equipped with a slide rule. After graduating he entered the U.S. Navy in January 1974. Peggy earned an English degree, then taught high school in Choctaw, Oklahoma, before joining the U.S. Navy as an unrestricted line officer. As a lieutenant in the Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps, Gary returned to Missouri S&T to earn his master’s degree. The couple met in 1983 when both were serving with the Naval Support Force Antarctica (NSFA), and they married in 1987.

During his years with the Navy, Gary gained skills in many areas, including technical training, financial management for complex construction projects, facilities maintenance, contract administration, project management and project engineering. He is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and has been a professional engineer in Missouri since 1982.

In 1994, stationed in Gulfport, Mississippi, the couple retired, each with 20 years of service. Since neither was a fan of the gigantic bugs and hurricanes that were facts of Mississippi life, they began planning their next chapter. Gary had always envisioned living closer to his family and thought Rolla had just the right number of stop lights, and Peggy thought the Ozarks were beautiful. And, having the university library nearby seemed advantageous in the mid-1990s — the heyday of dial-up Internet.

Gary’s first shot at retirement didn’t last long. In 1997 he founded Henderson Construction and Engineering to provide services to the burgeoning cellular phone industry. The company constructed numerous cell phone tower sites in a three-state area and quickly became the go-to contractor for difficult projects. In 2016, Gary turned operation of the company over to his brother and nephew but remained the engineer of record for another two years.

For his second retirement Gary spent four years building Vans RV-8A aircraft, which he now happily flies, an experience he shares with members of S&T’s aviation design team. “The students were really digging into the process of designing and building an airplane,” he says.

In fact, that engagement of bringing a concept to life is what inspires both of the Hendersons to support Missouri S&T, specifically the design teams.

“I think the design teams are what put our graduates ahead of the competition,” says Gary, adding that thanks to his S&T education, he never played second fiddle to other engineers — including one with a Ph.D. “I was able to go toe-to-toe with him on a couple of geotechnical issues,” Gary says.