The Red Leader, the Friendly Banker, E.K., one of the “Legends” – any one of these names might ring a bell for some of Warroad’s past visitors but certainly resonates with its residents as they all refer to one man – John Heneman.

When I first met John, it was early morning in the summer of 2007. We were both standing in the parking lot, waiting to get into the school – John to get in his 3-mile walk, me laps in the pool – speculating on why the doors were still locked. We’d been aware of each other’s presence; he knew that I was training for a triathlon and I’d heard he’d nicknamed me “the Olympian.” On this pleasant morning, he unassumingly reached out his hand and introduced himself. Despite being new to the community I, in turn, knew who he was, and had a name for him, too: the last of the Greats.

Sitting comfortably in his corner office at Security State bank, surrounded by New York Yankees memorabilia, memories, and Marilyn Monroe, John Heneman, age 90, politely answers all of the questions of this relatively new Warroad resident. The secret to staying young, John counsels, “is to keep moving and to keep working.” Through our conversation, it becomes apparent what John loves most: his family and friends, community, and sports.

A native of Warroad, John grew up on the “south side” of town in the yellow house, second in from the bridge, and across the street from the old Marvin house. His father, Harold “H. M.” Heneman, moved to Warroad in 1918 to work at the local bank. Like any other kid of that era, he spent lots of time on the river, fishing in the summer and playing hockey in the winter. His lifelong friends included the Marvin boys: Bill, Jack, Tut, Frank, and Cal. Like many of his Warroad classmates, he answered the call of duty and joined the Army in January 1942, after only one semester at Hamline University, and was sent to serve in the China-Burma-India conflict of World War II. “Out of our Warroad class of 36, we lost three, one of them was Overby [Stoskopf].”

John returned to Minnesota in 1946, graduated from Hamline in 1949 with a degree in Economics then served an additional ten months in the Korean War. After Korea, he worked at banks in South Dakota, southern Minnesota, and St. Paul, before finally coming back to his hometown in 1963 for good.

John’s CB handle on the lake, “Red Leader” he explains, is simply attributed to the fact that he had red hair in his youth. But it’s also true – even if he doesn’t come right out and admit it – that he is, and continues to be, a veritable, albeit “the back row guy” kind of leader in the Warroad community. When Cal Marvin wrote regularly for the Warroad Pioneer, he would often refer to John as “the Friendly Banker” and all the various ways John supported the wildly successful Warroad Lakers hockey team. John, himself, wrote anonymously for the paper, as well, signing off as “E.K.”, the E standing for the Japanese phrase “itai” meaning “it hurts”, pronounced [ee-tie] and K after the football player Walt Kowalczyk. “Only the paper, Cal, and someone else knew who I was until one year the Lakers won a championship and had a box of cigars for E.K., so I finally acknowledged who I was,” said John.

It’s a sobering truth that he is one of – if not the last – of his group of childhood friends; that group of men who worked hard to shape Warroad in positive ways and put it on the map. While John moves about his daily routine with little fanfare – a walk in the morning, gathering with the guys over coffee at the Dairy Queen, work at the bank, lunch, a rest, and back to the bank by 2pm – he is the silent partner of many local activities. He continues to be the friendly banker, supporting the Warroad Muskies baseball team, youth hockey, and any team who makes it to state. I even heard once that he treats the teams to breakfast before they head out to state championships. While he no longer writes for the paper, he continues to write notes and life observations on his own stationary with the header “Red Leader.” He is a lifetime member and supporter of Union Congregational Church as well as a lifelong member of the American Legion, the VFW, and the firing squad and is passionate about maintaining our area cemeteries and honoring deceased veterans.

These days John looks to the next generation for friendship and enjoys being part of the group unofficially dubbed “the Legends.” This group, too, consists of men with qualities similar to John’s and, in this way, the passing of the torch to create good things in Warroad, is passed on.