Major General Gerald K. Hendricks, USAF

It is with a heavy heart that I share news of my family’s loss. My father, Major General Gerald K. Hendricks, USAF (ret), passed peacefully on March 19, 2020, while in his home under hospice care. General Hendricks was predeceased by his wife Barbara (Bobby) Hendricks (2018) and is survived by his daughter Karen, her husband Steve, four grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren and his sister a Mareta Maier. He was 92.5 years old.

Gerry, as his friends called him, grew up on a wheat and cattle ranch in outside of Dufur, Oregon. His family was on the first wagon train west that blazed an Oregon Trail. He was very proud of his Oregon heritage! He loved his parents Lester and Mildred Hendricks and his siblings, Hollis, Mareta, Arlene and Jane.  He attended grade school in a one-room schoolhouse, becoming a volunteer fire fighter and living above the fire station when he was sixteen years old in order to finish high school. He was the first from his town to graduate from West Point (’51) and after completing flight school (first class of all jet pilots) he deployed for a year to the Korean war, receiving a telegram not long after arriving that he was the proud father of a baby girl. During an Air Force career that would span 32 years, he would serve in Korea and Vietnam and rise to be a senior command pilot, received many advanced college degrees from Harvard, George Washington University, International College of the Armed Forces. He was Commander of the Armament Lab at Eglin AFB and the Commander of ALL the US Air Force Laboratories for Air Force Systems Command.  He was the Vice Commander of the AF Space Division when he retired in 1982.