Gene Hennig didn't start a bucket list after being diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2013, at age 65. He was already well on his way to completing one that was broad and deep.
Hennig had started nonprofits, summited mountains, traveled the world. "He was the kind of guy who did his bucket list as he went along in life," daughter Emily Hennig said.
A respected business attorney and law instructor who served on national commissions and local nonprofit boards, Hennig died Aug. 25 in his Chanhassen home. He was 67. The son of Lutheran missionaries, Hennig grew up climbing mountains in southern India. He graduated in 1965 from Kodaikanal International School, which decades later gave him its highest honor for his service.
He earned a mechanical engineering degree from Valparaiso University in Indiana but didn't like the work. After watching Perry Mason he decided to be a lawyer, and enrolled in law school. He moved to Minnesota to clerk for Walter Rogosheske, a Minnesota Supreme Court justice.
He was a brilliant thinker whose childhood in India gave him a distinct take on culture, said Eric Magnuson, former chief justice of the state Supreme Court who was, at the time, a fellow clerk. It also meant that he was unprepared for the frigid temps, he said, chuckling. "He didn't own boots or hats or gloves."
Back at Valparaiso, teaching law, he spotted a beautiful fellow faculty member in academic garb.
"I was impressed by all the places he had been in the world," his wife, Kristie Hennig, said. Less than three months after their first date, Hennig proposed.
The pair moved to Minneapolis, the city Hennig loved, where he began a long career at Rider Bennett Egan and Arundel LLP. In 2007, he moved to Gray Plant Mooty.