Where’s Waldo?: Spotlight on the Dr. Fred O. Henker Papers

The Dr. Fred O. Henker papers (BC-MSS-03-19), donated to the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies by Dr. Fred O. Henker III in August 2003, contain biographical material and articles about early Arkansas physicians, especially founders of what is now the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). The majority of the articles in the collection were written by Fred O. Henker III and published in various historical journals. The collection also contains items that had belonged to his father, Fred O. (Waldo) Henker Jr., including vaudeville publicity photographs, correspondence, and photographs of family members in Germany, as well as military and other personal documents.

Fred O. Henker III, a Little Rock psychiatrist, was born on September 20, 1922, in Little Rock, the son of Fred O. Henker Jr. and Blanche Crawford Henker. He graduated from the University of Arkansas School of Medicine (now UAMS) in 1945. He was appointed to the faculty of psychiatry at UAMS in 1958 and retired as an emeritus professor in 1989. Henker also had a great interest in history and geology, with memberships in various geological and historical societies. He wrote and published numerous medical and historical articles and was especially interested in the founding physicians of the Medical Department of the Arkansas Industrial University (which eventually became UAMS). Dr. Henker married Virginia Cassady in 1945, and the couple had three children, Virginia Gail (who died as an infant in 1949), Gloria, and William (Bill). Dr. Henker died on March 15, 2005, in Little Rock.

His father, Fred O. (Waldo) Henker Jr., was born on August 27, 1891, in Arkansas, the son of German immigrant parents, Oswall Henker and Augusta Busch Henker. Fred Henker Jr. was a Little Rock bookbinder. He served in the U.S. Army during World War I and was commander of Shoemaker VFW Post in Little Rock. He married Blanche Crawford and the couple had two sons, Fred O. Henker III and William O. Henker.

Fred Oswald Henker Jr. discovered around age five that he was very limber and could perform tricks of twisting his body into unusual positions.

After training and studying other traveling contortionists, he began his amateur career in April 1909 at local theaters and shows. By the end of 1910, he started collecting costumes and stage props with the intent of performing professionally in vaudeville shows. He decided that his stage name would be Waldo (his middle name Oswald rearranged), but he was sometimes referred to as Fred Waldo.

He left Little Rock for St. Louis, and then moved on to Chicago. Sometime after 1911, he began to achieve show business success, touring the country and spending some time in New York. While on the road, he collected autographed portraits of other vaudeville performers of the day.

During World War I, Henker was assigned to a military show group that entertained troops throughout Europe, but he returned to his printing career in Little Rock at the end of the war, raising his family there. Henker died at age seventy-seven in April 1969, and his wife Blanche died in June 1979 in Little Rock. A diary he kept of his time as a vaudeville contortionist, edited by his son and his son’s wife, was published in the Pulaski County Historical Review in 1978.

The Dr. Fred O. Henker papers are available to researchers in the Research Room of the CALS Roberts Library. Visit the CALS website (opens in new window) for Roberts Library visiting information (opens in new window).