04/15/2026
Joan Elizabeth Ross Henning
Joan Elizabeth Ross Henning passed away on Monday, March 23, 2026, surrounded by her children and their spouses. She was 97 years old. She will be lovingly remembered by her family and friends.
Joan was born in Pontiac, Michigan, on September 29, 1928. Her parents, Lawrence and Beatrice Ross, gave her the middle name of Elizabeth, after Princess Elizabeth of Great Britain, who was two years older. Some people thought that they looked alike in later years, a comparison that Joan sometimes discouraged in favor of a comparison to French actress Leslie Caron. Both of them, actually, looked a little like Joan.
Her family, including her brother Lawrence Jr., moved from city to city around the Midwest almost annually during her early grade-school years, as her father was a salesman for a major cable and wire company. She adapted well to this peripatetic migration, developing a gregarious personality and an ease with making friends, which served her well throughout her life. The family settled long enough in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, so that she attended Glenbard High School for several consecutive years and graduated in 1946.
She attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, majoring in music and specializing in piano, then voice. She was a member of the Chi Omega sorority and, with three sorority sisters, spent the year 1948-49 studying at the École Normale de Musique and the Sorbonne in Paris. During Christmas break of that year, she and her companions were trapped in the small country of Andorra for two weeks, caught between Spanish regulations on rental automobiles and French avalanches. Intervention by the U.S. Embassy in Madrid liberated them, the publicity around which was Joan’s first brush with fame, as it were.
In 1951, she met Dale A. Henning, whom she would soon marry, while working as a secretary in the Psychology Department at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and earning her teaching credentials. At this time, she was also preparing for a dance part in a summer musical play about Abraham Lincoln, “Forever This Land!” But she left the production shortly after the opening, as she married Dale in July 1952 at her parents’ house in Glen Ellyn. They spent their rather unconventional honeymoon at the Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, as assistant researchers for a book on the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
They were avid travelers, spending the years 1954-55 in Norway, 1957-58 in Brazil, and 1969-70 in Britain, where Dale taught at business schools. Her son, Craig Randall (Randy), was born in 1956, shortly before their trip to Brazil; her first daughter, Leslie Ann, was born in 1960; and her second daughter, Nancy Lee, was born in 1968, shortly before their stay in London. These children learned how to travel at an early age in order to survive! They lived in Sheridan Heights, north of Seattle, during 1958-1968 and then in Shoreline during 1968-2019.
She and Dale were part of the University of Washington Business School faculty social circle, especially during the 1960s and 1970s, when she served as a member of the UW Faculty Wives Club. She was a Huskies football fan. Whether this was owing to her own enthusiasm or to humor Dale, we are not entirely sure; but it is likely that Midwestern collegiate football culture had rubbed off on her at Northwestern.
Throughout her life, Joan enjoyed singing. Her kids remember her singing in the living room with her 30-something mom friends, while she played the piano, cigarette smoke thick in the air. She sang in several choirs, including the local Shoreline Presbyterian Church choir, Choir of the Sound, Sno-King Chorale, and Kulshan Chorus. She continued to play the piano through her 50s.
Skiing was a large part of the Henning family experience. She and Dale learned how to ski during their stay in Norway, and subsequently conquered Zermatt, Davos, Sun Valley, Aspen, and perhaps 30 other ski resorts in the western United States, Canada, and Europe. A regular on the Innis Arden ladies’ ski bus, she skied until she was in her 80s, breaking her ankle once in the 1960s (at Snoqualmie Pass) and her leg in the 1980s. By the early 2000s, she could ski with her grandchildren during Christmas ski trips to Sun Peaks, British Columbia. Her favorite local ski area was Crystal Mountain.
Beginning in 1964, when she, Dale, Randy, and Leslie spent the summer in Honolulu, Hawaii also became a big part of Joan’s travel experience. Maui became her favorite island, and Napili Bay became the favorite family destination there.
During the 1970s through the 1990s, she worked as a travel agent at Tempo Travel in Lynnwood. As such, she ticketed travel for her family and friends - undoubtedly a major revenue stream for the agency, given the travel proclivity of this demographic - and was pleased to provide good bargains in the process.
Joan and Dale bicycled actively in their 60s and 70s as well, drawing in numerous unwitting friends in the process. She accompanied Dale on a bike trip across the great state of North Dakota in the summer of 1993.
After Dale died in 2019, she lived at Cordata Court in Bellingham for seven years, near Nancy, who oversaw her care and marched her around local parks and marinas to keep her fit. She much enjoyed the camaraderie among the residents there, and the music.
Her favorite film was “The Sound of Music,” and her favorite foreign city was Paris. She liked just about every flower she met, especially geraniums, wisteria, orchids, African violets, plumeria, and rhododendrons. Her favorite ice cream was butter pecan. She liked sitting on the deck of our house in Shoreline with us while watching the sun go down.
People who might be so inclined would be welcome to make a donation, in her memory, to the Kulshan Chorus, a remarkable community-minded organization that inspired her in later years. They can be found at www.kulshanchorus.org.
Joan is survived by her son Randy Henning (Heidi); daughters Leslie Henning (Glenn Lindsley) and Nancy Schmidt (Drew); grandsons Nathaniel and Nick Henning and Casey Schmidt; granddaughter Cassidy Schmidt; and two great-grandsons, Colby and Trevor Schmidt.
Known for her sense of humor and positive spirit, she was loved and will be greatly missed.
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