Whitney and Hendrickson got engaged last June while dining with Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace. ("Well, I threw you the engagement party" Hendrickson recalls the prince saying, "but I won't do the wedding.") It was love at first sight, they say, when they met at a dinner party in 1994 in Anchorage, where Hendrickson was a $53,000-a-year aide to Alaska Gov. Walter J. Hickel. Whitney soon started making excuses to visit Alaska. On one such trip the couple went fishing, although they "didn't catch much fish," she admits. "We knew then we were crazy about each other."
That knowledge survived both Hendrickson's subsequent admission that he wasn't as old as his receding hairline suggested and Whitney's confession that she wasn't as young as her energy level implied. When they actually realized the magnitude of their age difference, Whitney says, "I freaked out more than he did." Hendrickson, a former tennis pro, says he's oblivious to the nearly four-decade age difference: "I can't see it, I can't feel it, I don't know it."
Penny Chenery, a longtime friend of Whitney's (and owner of the late Triple Crown champion Secretariat), would likely agree. "She was my age once," she says of Whitney. "Now she's younger. At Saratoga, Whitney draws eyes the way the pari-mutuel windows attract the hopeful—whether she is in the paddock for the saddling of horses for the Whitney Handicap, arriving at a local tavern on a motorcycle, hosting a cocktail party for good friends (like Joan Rivers) at Cady Hill, her 21-room mansion, or crying out, as she tosses horse-shaped chocolates to an admiring crowd on gala night, "I love this community!" The sentiment is reciprocated. "She'll talk to everyone," says Beverly Wittner, of Niskayuna, N.Y. "She has the common touch."
And, as the inheritor of a reported $100 million fortune, uncommon means to support her high-octane way of life. When Whitney tires of visiting her own real estate—which includes a Manhattan penthouse, a 534-acre mansion and horse farm in Lexington, Ky, an apartment in tony Bal Harbour, Fla., and her five houses (and about 30 lakes) in the Adirondacks—she has been known to trek off to the North or South Poles or fly into the remote Alaskan wilderness to cheer her huskies competing in the formidable Iditarod dogsled course. Still, Whitney insists she's slowing down. "I've jumped out of airplanes, and I was one of the first people to go bungee jumping," she says. "But now I have John."
Indeed, as Whitney's point man, Hendrickson found himself smack dab in the middle of a land dispute with New York State. Eager to reduce the 51,000 acres of Adirondack forest that she inherited from Sonny, Whitney and her fiancé decided to subdivide 15,000 lush acres into 40 rustic plots to sell to aspiring gentry. The plan ran afoul of environmentalists and of Governor Pataki, who hopes to cement his reputation as a tree-hugger by adding the Whitney tract to the state's Adirondack preserve. "The governor sees it as a unique opportunity to protect and preserve a pristine parcel," says Pataki spokesman Michael McKeon.
The state offered $14 million for the land, but Whitney reportedly wanted twice that amount. Hendrickson defended their position, however. "We at Whitney Industries love wilderness too," he told The New York Times. "But we're practical environmentalists. We have to be able to make a return on an investment."
Hopes for resolving the conflict rose on Aug. 12 when the not-for-profit Nature Conservancy announced that it was willing to buy the Whitney tract and sell it back to the state at a lower price, in effect donating the difference.
Still, Hendrickson's role provoked some nasty comments. "I think he's the villain," says Chris Ballantyne, regional director for the Sierra Club. "Sonny [Whitney] cared about this land." To those who might take that comparison a step farther, Hendrickson has a firm reply. "As a man, I want to make it on my own," he says. Hendrickson refused Whitney's gift of a BMW, preferring instead his Ford Explorer, and he intends to sign a prenup clearly separating their assets. "Her things are her things."
And she has spent a lifetime accumulating them. Whitney, born Marie Louise Schroeder in Kansas City in 1925, moved to New York after the death of her accountant father, H.R. Schroeder, when she was 19. Hoping to become an actress, Marylou took bit parts on early TV shows and worked as an "idea girl" for radio programs. Nights were spent partying at Manhattan's El Morocco and the Stork Club. Her first husband was Frank Hobbs Hosford, an heir to the John Deere fortune, and the couple had four children: Marian Louise, age unavailable, Frank Hobbs Jr., 46, Henry, 45, and Heather, 42.
After separating from Hosford, Marylou met Sonny Whitney at a Phoenix supper club. His grandfather William C. Whitney had built a fortune on oil, tobacco and streetcars before serving as President Grover Cleveland's secretary of the Navy. Though born rich, Sonny proved a canny businessman in his own right, founding Pan American Airways and serving as a key investor in the film Gone with the Wind. When he met Marylou, Sonny was already on his third marriage, but that ended soon enough, and in 1958 he gave Marylou his last name, as well as a supporting role in his latest film project, Missouri Traveler, with Lee Marvin. In turn, in 1959, Marylou gave Sonny a daughter, Cornelia. Aware of her husband's reputation as a ladies' man, Marylou kept their romance fresh with elaborate parties, intricate meals and secluded getaways. In his later years, while Marylou pursued her own interests in horse racing, philanthropy and the outdoors, she doted on Sonny especially. "She would fix breakfast for him, read to him, play games with him," says longtime friend Linda Green. "She was very caring."
Marylou was devastated by Sonny's death at 93 in 1992, but her new romance has helped her heal, friends believe. "John gave her back that zest for living," says Sheryl Schwartz, who summers in Saratoga. "He's good for her, and she's good for him."
If a bit exhausting. Though he would like to sleep in later, Hendrickson has found he must get up at 5 a.m. just to keep pace with Whitney, whose feet hit the floor running at 4:30 a.m. Without wasting a minute, she'll review a plethora of details with her house staff, call her son—another early riser, presumably—or head out the door to check on her horses at the stable. "Seizing the dawn," her fiancé calls it, though he would rather keep more of its early light at bay. "I've tried to introduce her to TV," he says ruefully. "But that's not working."
PETER AMES CARLIN
JENNIFER FREY in Saratoga
- Contributors:
- Jennifer Frey.
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