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Sky Sox executive Henniger doesn't let fireworks accident ruin his fun

By Jack Etkin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published September 23, 2008 at 3:18 p.m.

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The first one to blink loses during a good-natured staring contest between Rai Henniger and his daughter Grace, 11, during a Colorado Springs Sky Sox game last month. Henniger lost his left eye in a fireworks accident more than 16 months ago and has undergone major reconstructive surgery on his face.

Photo by Brian Lehmann © The Rocky

The first one to blink loses during a good-natured staring contest between Rai Henniger and his daughter Grace, 11, during a Colorado Springs Sky Sox game last month. Henniger lost his left eye in a fireworks accident more than 16 months ago and has undergone major reconstructive surgery on his face.

George Evans holds Henniger's hands while welcoming him to a Sky Sox game Aug. 9. Henniger viewed the postgame fireworks show as "healing."

George Evans holds Henniger's hands while welcoming him to a Sky Sox game Aug. 9. Henniger viewed the postgame fireworks show as "healing."

Henniger watches fireworks with his children at Security Service Field more than a year after a shell exploded in his face while he was preparing for a 2007 game.

Henniger watches fireworks with his children at Security Service Field more than a year after a shell exploded in his face while he was preparing for a 2007 game.

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Over and over, Rai Henniger kept asking the same simple question: What happened?

He was at Denver Health Medical Center, his wife, Heather, at his bedside, their lives and those of their three children forever changed.

It was about three weeks after the grisly fireworks accident that shattered the left side of Henniger's face, a time of constant query from Henniger.

"Rai, you were in an accident," Heather repeatedly told him. "There was a shell. You're hurt, but you're going to be OK. Nobody else was hurt."

With each reply, Heather recalled seeing "the look on his face, the horror."

He asked so often - twice in two hours, at one point - Heather remembers a moment of pique that led to a curt response. Henniger, for his part, said, "I relived the information every time."

Finally, Henniger said, everything clicked. He came to understand what had happened 16 1/2 months earlier and, "at this really powerful moment," Henniger began to pray, thanking God for being alive and prioritizing the rest of his life.

"I said, 'I don't know why I'm here,' " Henniger said, " 'but through the grace of you, I'm here, so whatever you have for me, I want to be open to that, sensitive to it, so I can live the rest of my life dedicated to you.'

"Then I put a little caveat on it. I said, 'But listen, please don't stick me on a box downtown, preaching.' I'm putting conditions on it, but that's not my gig."

Henniger's humor in a private moment with his God will come as no surprise to anyone who knows him. He was injured May 12, 2007, the day before Mother's Day. On May 21 - Heather's birthday - Henniger underwent an eight-hour operation.

"I went to great lengths to actually get out of buying gifts and stuff," Henniger said, and Heather, sitting nearby, laughed.

During an office visit late last month, Mario Imola, a cranial plastic surgeon in Denver who tediously has rebuilt Henniger's face, told him, "Rai, whenever I'm getting down, I got to give you a call. You just make me laugh."

Goodwill ambassador

Laughter, joy and fun have been priorities for Henniger, part of his daily existence. He has been fortunate enough to incorporate them into his work for the Triple-A Colorado Springs Sky Sox, a Rockies affiliate. Henniger has been with the Sky Sox since 1991, an organizational fixture who has brought them a reservoir of goodwill.

"This franchise is now 21 years in this market," Sky Sox general manager Tony Ensor said, "and when you think of (the) Sky Sox over the last 20 years, you don't think of anyone else other than Rai Henniger. He's been the face, the voice, the ambassador of the organization for that entire time."

Henniger's formal title is senior vice president for marketing. He viewed his job as anything but work.

"I was a playoholic," said Henniger, looking back on the many hours he put in at Security Service Field, the wacky promotions he helped devise and implement during games there and the many visits he made to schools, churches and other organizations on behalf of the Sky Sox.

Henniger, who spent his youth in Hawaii, seems descended from Bill Veeck when it comes to devising ways for the nonfan to have a good time at the ballpark.

"What it basically comes down to is memories," Henniger said, "and if you do something that people never forget, then you've done something right, maybe. It could be something silly."

Henniger was the driving force behind "Bark in the Park Night." It was started by another Triple-A team but transformed into a weekly staple by the Sky Sox, enabling people and their pooches to stroll around the field.

For "Computer Geek Night," the Sky Sox brought in Myron Noodleman, with Henniger dressed up as his assistant in high-water pants with a pocket protector and appropriately uncool glasses. A Sky Sox executive questioned the need to pay Noodleman roughly $2,000, and Henniger quickly went from capable assistant to chief nerd when the promotion was repeated.

Henniger came up with "Assorted Animal Snout Night," where fans in different sections wore animal noses and, on Henniger's cue, the pigs, the cows, the cats, the gorillas and whatever else was in the menagerie would let loose with the sound of their animal as the opposing pitcher went into his delivery.

"Basically, it plays to the kids and the kids in us," Henniger said. "I've always wanted to put people at ease. I've always loved that."

Medical odyssey

Everything changed for Henniger in an awful instant on a Saturday afternoon when he was preparing fireworks, something he had done with meticulous care countless times for the Sky Sox. A 21/2-inch spherical shell exploded, disfiguring Henniger and sending him on a medical odyssey after a brush with death.

Imola and Nick Slenkovich, another plastic surgeon in Denver, have worked to restore Henniger's face. After recently undergoing what is called a takedown procedure, where the flesh connecting Henniger's nose and forehead was separated, he said, "It's the most human I've looked since May 11 last year. It's a big step."

The doctors had to reconstruct Henniger's nose - the accident cost Henniger his sense of smell - using bone and cartilage from his rib and ear.

"My nose still looks like a Mr. Potato Head nose because it's got that snap-on look really all around it," Henniger said. "It's not blended in yet. Those procedures to blend it in will come later."

On Henniger's cheeks, chin and forehead are bluish-black dots. Those are bits of gunpowder from the blast, marking his face in what is called "tattooing."

Henniger has a scar across the top of his skull, where at times there has been something far more noticeable, namely the appearance of horns (Henniger calls them "my horns of plenty") resulting from saline injections.

The horns are tissue expanders, enabling the doctors to expand Henniger's forehead skin and close other wounds. The photograph on Henniger's driver's license was taken when he had tissue expanders he calls "Mickey Mouse ears" atop his head.

Henniger, whose first name is pronounced "rye," has had two sets of tissue expanders with a third coming.

When Imola was asked to categorize Henniger's injuries on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the most horrific, Imola said, "He's like an eight or a nine. Losing an eye, regardless of the cosmetic problem, is always devastating."

The accident cost Henniger his left eye and the surrounding muscle. Denver ocularist Walter Johnson - owner, Henniger said, of a classic baseball name - has matched the iris on a prosthesis perfectly with that of his existing eye.

Henniger recalled an instance when the prosthesis popped out. He was fooling around with his children, jamming on an air guitar to a heavy-metal song. Henniger kept going, continuing the fun as if nothing happened, thinking that exposing his children to the eye cavity would be beneficial. Grace, 11, his oldest child, thought otherwise and became extremely upset.

His behavior, Henniger said, was an example of the trauma he suffered in the frontal lobe of his brain. The frontal lobe is the emotional control center of the brain and, among other things, is involved with filtering and judgment, impulse control and spontaneity.

Henniger said these days he's less prone to be impulsive and act solely on emotions because of treatment he has received at Craig Hospital under neuropsychologist Jim Schraa.

Mourning process

Henniger has been told his reaction to his misfortune has served as an inspiration to others. He doesn't see it that way, saying his reaction has been the one that simply makes the most sense.

"Yeah, you go through a mourning process, just like you would if you found out you were terminal," said Henniger, referring to denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, the five stages of grief put forth by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying.

"And you get to an acceptance about your loss of an eye or a face or whatever it is . . . and the only logical response is to overcome it with a positive attitude and humor and lots of love for other people and thankfulness. That's the greatest thing, I think, is learning to be thankful rather than bitter."

Asked whether that was hard, Henniger simply said, "No."

Heather said it has been difficult for her and the Henniger's three children to see people stare at him when the family is out in public.

"You want to be somewhat protective," Heather said. "To us, he's a hero, kind of, just the way he's handled this whole thing. I know it's human nature, but to see people stare and point, especially earlier on before the reconstructive surgeries. The tissue expanders are especially difficult to handle."

Imola said work needs to be done with the alignment of Henniger's left eye, his nose tissue and his forehead, all of which could take up to a year.

"I'm hoping to get it to the point where, let's say at about 10 or 15 feet, you really wouldn't stare," Imola said. "If you came within 5 or 10 feet, you'd have to look and say, 'Yeah, something's up there.' That's a goal I have for Rai."

Reactions toward Henniger's disfigurement tend to vary, depending on who's doing the staring. Henniger said women, when noticing the tissue expanders, would give him a compassionate look and be very sweet because "they literally thought I was dying of brain tumors.

"Men would totally ignore it and not even acknowledge it. They'd just turn the other way and pretend they didn't see it. Kids would be scared, or they'd ask, 'Dude, what happened to you?' "

Henniger's ready answer is, "It was a fireworks accident."

Unexplained explosion

The Sky Sox would entertain fans nightly with fireworks, two loud concussion blasts, such as the one that injured Henniger, going off in daylight after the national anthem, one thundering shell following every homer by a Colorado Springs player - up to four for a grand slam - and a few ignited at the seventh-inning stretch.

Two years ago, Henniger suggested to Sky Sox management that to assure maximum efficiency for fans and sponsors, he coordinate the fireworks displays instead of having them contracted. Trained by a professional, Henniger became a licensed fireworks-display operator.

And on the afternoon of May 12, 2007, hours before "Fort Carson Appreciation Night," Henniger was preparing for that night's show.

Behind the scoreboard in left field was an automated rack with 20 mortar tubes, each of which holds a fireworks shell. Henniger carefully inserted a shell into each tube and made sure it was sealed properly.

The shells are electronically fired. Henniger said he gently inserted a small pyrotechnic bulb into the black powder and attached it to a fuse, which is connected to a system of underground wires running to the press box, where the public-address announcer monitors a control box that activates the process.

"I get all those things ready beforehand," Henniger said. "And I have a very detailed assembly-line process I use. It's consistent and safe."

For reasons that have yet to be explained, mortar tube No. 3 went off. The shell cracked after it hit the left side of Henniger's face going 250 to 300 feet per second. Henniger said the shell rolled about 15 feet away - thankfully not toward the rack of mortar tubes - and that about 21/2 seconds later, fizzled "more like a gigantic sparkler" instead of exploding.

The cause of the accident has not been determined. OSHA, one of several groups to investigate, insisted the apparatus behind the scoreboard be dismantled. The Sky Sox hired an electrical engineer in Denver to examine the matter.

Henniger said the engineer replicated the apparatus, but Henniger said he has not been told of any findings.

At the time of the accident, groundskeeper Steve DeLeon was across the outfield and heard the telltale WHOOMP. He was the first to reach Henniger, determined he was conscious and rolled him over so he wouldn't choke on his own blood.

Army sergeants Christopher Smith and Michael Cordosi, artillery soldiers who had served in Iraq and knew emergency training, arrived next and tended to Henniger until the paramedics arrived.

Smith and Cordosi had been to the field several times in the previous two weeks, Henniger said, and they were there hours before game time, tending to details for that night that included an 18-gun cannon salute and a parachute team.

"If it had been 'Assorted Animals Snout Night,' that wouldn't help me," Henniger said. "I thought about this heavily, trust me. There's 72 home games, 73 if we play (an exhibition game against) the Rockies, and last year, we did play the Rockies. Only one is 'Fort Carson Appreciation Day.' . . . So the chances are one of 73 it's that day.

"Those aren't good odds. But that's what happened. Furthermore, and it's funny how a lot of things have to come together to make good stuff happen, those guys were out there early."

Henniger, Heather and their children have been in therapy since the accident. In addition to 11-year-old Grace, the family includes Emma, 8, and Benjamin, 6. This past spring, Henniger was tucking in Benjamin when he announced, "I want to learn kung fu, Daddy."

Henniger suggested that might be something they could do together, a father-son activity both might enjoy.

"He goes, 'Yeah. I want to protect you from the people that tried to kill you,' " Henniger said. "So it turns out, for a year, he thought someone tried to kill me and they didn't finish the job and they were still out there. He couldn't grasp the accident concept without someone being at fault."

Heather said the children have dealt with the accident in different ways, but there is a common thread.

"I think they all have a certain amount of fear of what's going to happen," Heather said. "Their whole world has been rattled by it. They were afraid for a long time when we talked about Daddy going back to work - they were afraid he was going to start doing fireworks again."

Henniger sat in the stands for two Sky Sox games last month that were followed by a fireworks show. He took his family to "just maybe get some healing and, hopefully, get us all to look at fireworks with joy and celebration rather than what happened to me."

The kids were fine. But Henniger said Heather, at her first fireworks show since her husband's accident, "lasted about 5 seconds" before retreating to the Sky Sox's offices and didn't attend the second.

Hearing the first shell go off made Henniger a bit emotional.

"I think it just registers in my memory as the last thing I heard prior to being not normal," he said, chuckling. "Once I get past that, though, I enjoyed the rest of the show."

Ensor, the Sky Sox's general manager, said the club is holding a position open for Henniger whenever he's ready to return. They had a preliminary meeting to discuss it late last month. Henniger said the meeting went well and, along with his therapists, he and Ensor will determine "what my scope is going to be."

In the interim, life goes on. Henniger turned 49 on Aug. 21, which means he is bearing down on a milestone birthday with attendant thoughts about the passage of time and a certain amount of reflection.

"It's back to being a celebration," Henniger said of his birthday, "which reminds me that's the way it should have been every year because I'm here and I've got a life ahead of me. And I've got my children. I've got my wife. And I've got my God, who got me through this."

Henniger and Heather, who were married in 1995, left two weeks ago for a 23-day trip to Venice and Florence, Italy, and Paris. The impetus for the journey is the wedding of Henniger's best friend on an island in the Venetian Lagoon.

"This is going to be unstructured and relaxing," Henniger said before leaving for the European sojourn. "Heather and I are going to be together. It's a celebration of our marriage and everything she sacrificed for me and the family. This is the trip of a lifetime."

Comments

  • September 23, 2008

    5:10 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    RBDenver writes:

    Great story!

  • September 24, 2008

    3:56 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    MOM4kids writes:

    Thank you for sharing your inspirational story Henniger Family. Sounds like you know what is important. Hats off to you and other great families like you that face adversity head on with a sense of humor and lots of love and support.
    P.S. Sorry if I stare if I meet you some day. It will be because I admire and respect your strength.