His family called him "the Bomber," a reference to his hell-for-leather approach to card games.
Journalists remembered a hardworking colleague who didn't care about getting credit.
And the University of St. Thomas considered him its No. 1 ambassador, a man who could always be counted on to do what was best for everyone.
Doug Hennes died unexpectedly Thursday at his Mendota Heights home. Hennes, 63, was vice president for government relations and special projects at St. Thomas. He also served the school as vice president for university and government relations from 1990 to 2017.
Before joining St. Thomas, Hennes was a reporter and metro editor for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, where he helped produce two reporting projects that won Pulitzer Prizes for the newspaper in the 1980s. A native of Owatonna, Minn., he graduated from St. Thomas in 1977 and was fiercely loyal to his alma mater.
Hennes was a natural communicator and collaborator, said St. Thomas President Julie Sullivan.
"He would come into a room and start looking for people to have conversations with," she recalled. "He was a gifted writer, a gifted communicator.
"And he was a historian. Anytime anybody wanted to know something about St. Thomas, go ask Doug, whether it happened 100 years ago or yesterday."