Joel Henderson pulled out his trusty smartphone in lightning quick fashion, like a gunslinger in the Old West.
The 38-year-old father of three from Crown Point has used it to shoot photos and videos of anything and everything. Dozens of times a day, every day. He has for years.
His phone dangles on a homemade lanyard around his neck so he can always be ready to shoot.
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“I don’t want to miss anything,” Henderson told me while walking through Wirt-Emerson School of Visuals and Performing Arts in Gary.
It was one of the rare times he strolled through a Gary school as a welcomed guest, in a still-operational building that had power and lights to guide his way. Typically, he visits former Gary schools and buildings that have been long abandoned, neglected and ignored by society.
“They’re all lost to time,” Henderson said.
The first time he visited an abandoned structure was on Dec. 11, 2016, when he and his cousin, Tony Madriñan, walked through a castle-looking house in Lake Station.
“Just to see what it looked like inside,” said Henderson, who works at a computer software company in Crown Point.
A family relative said they should visit the long-abandoned Union Station in Gary, near city hall, and the old Palace Theater on Broadway. I’ve been inside those once-majestic buildings and they’re fascinating despite their neglected condition.
“It was the coolest [expletive] I had ever seen,” Henderson said.
It was impossible for him not to photograph and video-record what he saw, heard and felt. He fell in love right there at the intersection of the distant past and gritty present.
“I thought I would be terrified, but I’m not,” said Henderson, who began video-recording his daily life with a camcorder when his now 14-year-old daughter was born.
On Jan. 28, 2017, he and his cousin stumbled onto Lew Wallace High School in Gary, which has been closed since 2014. They noticed an opened classroom window and went inside to shoot photos and video.
“It looked and felt post-apocalyptic in there,” Henderson said, noting that his parents graduated from the school in 1968.
He and Madriñan have returned there more than a dozen times. They were once stopped by Gary police officers who asked a few questions, but allowed them to leave without any problems.
“We don’t take stuff and we don’t break stuff,” Madriñan said.
Henderson added, “Your intentions matter when you go into Gary. We go there to document these old buildings, not to steal anything or cause a problem.”
Henderson caught my attention when I watched one of his videos at Lew Wallace. He and a few of his friends spent several hours there cleaning a section of the school.
I don’t mean just tidying a few things. I mean sweeping, cleaning and organizing on a hot day, with sweat dripping down their backs.
In the video, Henderson tells viewers to please not trash that section of the school again.
“People are putting their trash in garbage cans now,” he said.
The cousins’ goal when they started was to film one “adventure” video a month. It quickly spiraled into the mindset of “every free moment we can be filming, we are,” states Henderson’s website, www.Comeuppence.com.
He coined the site’s name, a purposely-misspelled “comeuppance,” from one on his favorite episodes of “The Simpsons.” The site also houses Henderson’s daily video blog, a candid, humorous peek at his life, including family and friends.
(Watch his video, “Sunday Beer Run,” created when Indiana began allowing retail alcohol sales on Sundays, at https://youtu.be/l7o2_qAuDEI.)
“What began as a creative outlet has become a genuine passion for documenting and celebrating life,” Henderson said. “I had no idea it would spin out into all this.”
The Comeuppence Network also includes behind-the-scenes videos of his “Lost to Time” series, which follows Henderson and Madriñan as they explore abandoned buildings in Gary. They are up to 80 “adventure videos” and counting.
“If it’s lost to time, we want to visit and document it,” Madriñan said.
“We understand that we’re not exclusive to going into these buildings,” Henderson said. “For example, City Methodist Church in downtown Gary is [a lure] for urban explorers. But I pride myself on my video footage and my skills.”
Born and raised in Crown Point, Henderson described himself as part poser, part dork, part precocious teenager. He felt wired to everything around him. Sometimes too much so. In eighth grade, he was put on Ritalin through his high school years.
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“It helped me focus, but I became very robotic,” he said.
Henderson is diabetic, nearsighted and hard of hearing, with a sponge-like mind for everything around him. He’s also a year-round sandals-and-socks kind of guy, even in dark, grimy abandoned buildings.
“I keep a pair of shoes in my van,” he said.
Henderson’s all-time favorite TV show is “Lost,” so he named his 8-year-old son Sawyer to honor a character in the show. His youngest kid is 4. The couple purposely spaced out the births roughly five years apart to keep order in their home.
“I didn’t care about my kids until I had them,” he said philosophically. “The same goes with these old buildings in Gary. I care about them. I love them. And I love to document them. I believe that someone will appreciate it someday. Even if it’s just me.”
jdavich@post-tribcom
Twitter@jdavich
See Henderson’s work
LOSTtoTIME: Gary Alerding Settlement House https://www.facebook.com/ComeuppenceNetwork/videos/1261457610647900/
LOSTtoTIME: St Peter & Paul Church
https://www.facebook.com/ComeuppenceNetwork/videos/1320845948042399/
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