After he served in World War II, after a stint in graduate school, Tim Heninger went home to tiny Monroe, La. A chance encounter led to his becoming a professor of English and comparative literature.

He thrived on the teacher-student relationship, regularly inviting students for dinner and displaying photos of their children along the top of his bookcase.

Such was the connection he forged that a student from 40 years ago and her husband dropped by to visit shortly before his death.

Simeon Kahn "Tim" Heninger Jr. died a couple of months ago of a heart attack in his garden as he scanned his plantings for signs of spring. He was 85.

Heninger was born in Monroe, the youngest of three children.

The local school system didn't have enough money to finance 12th grade, so he graduated as a junior and enrolled at Tulane University.

During his college years, he enlisted in the Army Air Force and became a meteorologist. He was scheduled to go to Japan to prepare for the U.S. invasion, doing single-station weather forecasting. He would be out there alone with a weather balloon.

Then Hiroshima was bombed, and he no longer had to go.

Every day during his military service, Heninger kept a journal. On the day the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, he wrote that he wanted to learn more about this new atom technology in hopes it could be used for peaceful means.

In keeping with that, he enrolled at Columbia University to study physical chemistry after the war. It wasn't for him. "I turned off my Bunsen burner and went home," he liked to say.

He went to work for his father, a middleman selling hides, pecans and scrap metal.

On a business trip to New Orleans, wandering his old Tulane campus, he ran into a former English professor. The professor urged him to enroll in graduate school as the campus was flooded with returning vets seeking an education. The teacher promised Heninger a teaching assistantship in exchange. Heninger agreed.

Stints at Duke, UNC-CH

After a Fulbright scholarship, Heninger taught at Duke University. He lived in a dormitory apartment and served as a resident fellow, a title that carried no real job description. But Heninger took the role seriously, counseling students and getting to know them.

When visiting lecturers came to campus, Heninger would invite them over to share dinner with half a dozen students.

Rees Shearer was a junior who remembers breaking bread with Heninger and Joseph Heller, author of "Catch-22."

Heninger connected with students as equals, Shearer said.

"When you're in his presence, you get the feeling that you're the most important person in the whole world," he said.

From Duke, Heninger moved to Wisconsin, then to California, where he met his second wife, Dottie.

She was 25, he nearly double that at 48. Four months later, they married.

Together, they continued to Vancouver and then back to the Triangle, where he taught English at UNC-Chapel Hill until the early 1990s.

After officially giving up teaching, he continued outside the classroom.

Second-graders and older adults learned about art from him as he led tours through Chapel Hill's Ackland Art Museum and the N.C. Museum of Art in Raleigh. At Orange Correctional Center in Hillsborough, he mentored prisoners, taking several out on day passes, teaching them how to better navigate the outside world.

Ill and still inspiring

At Carol Woods Retirement Community where he and his wife lived, Heninger was part of a group that agreed to meet with UNC-CH students. It was a deliberate decision on Heninger's part, another opportunity to impart to others what he had learned.

In 2001, Heninger was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. He volunteered to share with occupational therapy students how his life had changed since then. He and other Carol Woods residents served as a sounding board for the students, who had been dispersed into the community to meet with patients. The Carol Woods group was a safe place for the students to ask questions, to find out what it really felt like to live with a debilitating disease.

Heninger and the others told their stories, shared what they were proud of in their lives and what had disappointed them. Heninger spoke of his career and the pleasure he took in his garden.

He spoke of the physical limitations -- how he couldn't walk as far and couldn't swim, how the disease made him, a confident and self-assured man, anxious.

After the meeting, the students were astounded at how open Heninger had been.

"So many of our students come in and say they want to work with children," said Sue Coppola, an associate professor in occupational science at UNC-CH. "That group came out of that afternoon with Tim and said they want to work with older adults."

They were so inspired that they sent a card to Heninger thanking him.

He never saw it.

Heninger died several days after, a teacher until the end.

Tim Heninger is survived by his wife, Dottie, four children and four grandchildren.

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