Alaskan John Hendrickson died at age 59 at Saratoga Hospital in Sarasota, New York the morning of Aug. 19.
Hendrickson was a former state tennis champion who was coached by former Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan, was a tennis instructor, and served as an aide to Gov. Wally Hickel.
A West High School graduate from Anchorage, he met and married Marylou Whitney, the sole heir to the $100 million estate of the late Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney. He and Whitney met after he appeared on a segment of The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1989, an episode that was about Alaskan men looking for brides. He and Whitney got acquainted during one of her dog-sledding adventures, according to an article from The Buffalo News in 1997.
The two had a vast age difference and their romance and marriage was the subject of much talk at the time — she was 71 and he was 32, when he proposed at Buckingham Palace. But they had a relationship that endured the speculation until her death in 2019 at the age of 93.
According to news accounts of the era, “We’re just two people in love trying to grab our share of happiness in the world,” Hendrickson said, claiming he did not even know Whitney’s precise age. He added that it mattered not a whit that onlookers might mistake Whitney for his mother while they are out on dates. “If they told me that, I’d say ‘I hope she spanks me,’ ” he said, when they married in August of 1996.
Hendrickson was elected chairman of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in 2017, served as a former New York Racing Association board member, and was a special adviser to Gov. Andrew Cuomo on matters pertaining to Saratoga racing, according to news reports out of New York.
Whitney was a lifelong breeder and owner of thoroughbred race horses and was a well-known philanthropist and socialite who was known as the “Queen of Saratoga.” She also loved the Iditarod Sled Dog Race and flew from Anchorage to Nome, monitoring the dogs and her sponsored musher, Martin Buser, along the route numerous times. Both of Hendrickson and Whitney were generous contributors to many political campaigns in Alaska over the years.
He worked to get a public tennis facility built in Anchorage and paid to have the courts at Lyn Ary Parks refurbished, and they were renamed the Hendrickson Courts at Lyn Ary Park.
The cause of his death has not been made public yet, nor have details of his memorial.