Editor’s note: The following article is part of a series on prominent Warren citizens in honor of Black History Month.
Alderwoman Dorothy Henderson has achieved and maintained Level 1 and Level 2 Municipal Official Certification plus has 15 core educational hours of study in subject matters such as budgeting personnel management and the methods of effective leadership.
Henderson was awarded the Jack Rhodes Distinguished Service Award by Arkansas Municipal League. This award was presented to her in recognition of Henderson’s service to the city of Warren and to Arkansas Municipal League. Jack R. Rhodes Sr. was a former mayor of Lake Village. He served 20 years on the League Executive Committee and in 1990, he was made a lifetime honorary member of Arkansas Municipal League.
She has been appointed by two different governors – Mike Huckabee and Mike Beebe, respectively – to serve on Arkansas boards, the U.S. Selective Service Board and the Public Health Board. She was elected to serve as an Arkansas Municipal League vice president for District 4, was a recipient of the Outstanding Young Woman of America Award, Who’s Who of America, inducted in the Executive Professional Hall of Fame, selected as Professional Business Woman of the Year, Employee of the Year, inducted in the National Public Managers Hall of Fame, selected Professional Business Woman of the Year, was a former vice president of Bradley County Chamber of Commerce and former president of Star City Area Chamber of Commerce.
Henderson is a member of Warren City Council, serving on the Ways and Means, Fire, and Community and Economic Development committees.
She was named Bradley County Citizen of the Year in 2011 and Lincoln County Woman of the Year while serving as the Lincoln County Department of Human Services administrator.
A former county administrator for DHS for Lincoln and Bradley counties, she is a former area manager with Arkansas Employment Security Division covering Central and Southeast Arkansas. Currently, she is an area director with DHS, covering a part of Central, Eastern and Southeast Arkansas. She has been named County Administrator of the Year as well as Employee (Peer) of the Year and received the Director of the Year Award.
She has been profiled in an Unsung Hero Special. In 1996, a book, “The Origins and Legacies of the Central High Crisis,” by John A. Kirk, was presented in her honor to Warren Branch Library.
Henderson was also featured in the Arkansas Municipal League Magazine and the Rural Arkansas News Magazine.
She is married to Larry Henderson, a retired executive director of a nonprofit organization, whose business was selected as Business of the Year in 2011. They had two sons, Cornell and Timothy (deceased) and four granddaughters, Raya, Alexis, Mya and Zoey, and one grandson, Christopher. Henderson is the youngest daughter of the late Jeff and Codelia Clay.
Her hobbies include traveling, tennis, writing short stories and poems.
She said the greatest needs of the city are new roofs on the Municipal Building and Emergency Services Building, tearing down the Bryant’s Building and having three buildings on Cedar Street meeting a structural engineer’s requirements.
