Henry is on the board at Mobtown Theater, which Hopkins classmate Ryan Whinnem founded. He said that's why the Mobtown Players thought of him for the part, which became open amid a last-minute reshuffling of the cast.
The play is about a two candidates vying for their party's presidential nomination. To make it topical, the director made one of the candidates female and gender-swapped other parts. But the company that owns the rights to the play nixed those changes, something rights-holders can apparently do in the land of the free, so parts had to be recast. They found themselves in need of a guy to play a campaign manager.
Henry was asked and accepted. Reluctantly. Quietly.
"I didn't go out of my way to spread the word about it," he said. "I wasn't sure how good I would be. ... I've never thought of myself as an actor. I've often told people that I considered it a threshold point of success for a theater company when they stopped calling to say, 'Hey, can you play Guard No. 2 or Nell the kitchen wench?' "
A smile and a plea
E-mail from Steven Appel, president of Nouveau Contemporary Goods in former Councilman Ken Harris' old district:
"A young lady with a beautiful smile came in the store while I was working with a customer and I saw her talking with one of our designers for a few minutes and she handed him a paper then left shortly there after. ... It was Kenny Harris's daughter Nicole and she was handing out fliers to local businesses explaining to them that her Dad's murderers had not been caught yet and the metro crime stoppers reward was only $2,000, an embarrassing amount for an official who fought so hard for this community, and could we send them some money to help up the reward and get her Dad's killer's caught.
"We will certainly send some money in, I hope that other businesses do so. ... It was and is heart breaking to see this young lady with this big smile going around the neighborhood asking for help. What guts, just like her Dad. He would be so proud."
Connect the dots
