Barbara Lee Dean Hendricks

Barbara Lee Dean Hendricks, award-winning author, producer and photographer, died Thursday, July 28, 2022 of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also known as ALS.
Born March 10, 1946, in Alice, Texas, to Homer E. and Barbara R. Dean, she shared the hospital nursery with her lifelong friend, Paulette Barker Southard. Hendricks was an excellent student, graduating as a National Merit Scholar and salutatorian of the 1964 class of William Adams High School in Alice. She attended Rice University for two years and continued her studies at the University of Texas at Austin, University of Tennessee, UCLA and UC Berkeley before earning a degree in Media Production from the University of Colorado in 1979. Decades later she received her Master of Science in Management of Technology from the University of Texas at San Antonio with a perfect 4.0-point record.
Hendricks career was as diverse as her love for literature and reading, films and all endeavors involving creativity. In her early career, she signed on with CBS to work with schools and educational television in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, started her own multimedia communications production company in Austin and even returned to her hometown to run the Instructional Television Department at Alice Independent School District. In 1987, she married the love of her life, Bill Hendricks, an award-winning reporter with the San Antonio Express-News. Bill s illustrious career included coverage of the assassination of President Kennedy, the Tet offensive in Viet Nam, the moon landing, Watergate Hearings, and countless other stories.
Once in San Antonio, Barbara continued her business. Clients included the U.S. Air Force, the Witte Museum and KLRN-TV, for whom she wrote and produced a wellness television series called It s Your Health. She began her artistic career in earnest and exhibited photographs in several San Antonio galleries and shows. Some of Barbara s finest work came from her travels. Whether across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, or in Japan, Australia, Greece, or Paris, her 35-millimeter film camera was always around her neck.
A founding board member and early president of the San Antonio Women s Chamber of Commerce, Barbara was also a long-time member of SA100 and the Association for Women in Communications (AWC). She taught mass communication and screenwriting courses at Northwest Vista College. She was the author of The Building Arts of South Texas: Stories of Endangered Building Arts & the Craftsmen Who Keep Them Alive the 2015 anthology of 10 master artisans who preserve historic buildings in South Texas. Hendricks contributed many photographs to the book, which won awards from the American Institute of Architects and the Conservation Society of San Antonio.
Among Barbara s professional recognitions are the AWC Headliner Award, the JC Penney Spirit of the American Woman Award for Creativity and an Addy (American Advertising Award.) At the national level, honors include an AWC Clarion Award for a Fisher House Foundation document and several Telly Awards for excellence in video and television. She was elected to membership in Delta Kappa Gamma, an honorary educational sorority, and served on local and national boards of SA100 and AWC.
Hendricks never lost her childlike wonder, her questing intellect, or her creative spirit. She truly believed you learn something new every day, an homage to the principle that life was her school. She attributed these qualities to her parents and their influence on her wide-ranging interests and passion for travel, art, and music. Saying that live music filled her soul she loved going with her parents to symphony and opera performances, driving to Houston, Dallas, or San Antonio to launch her love affair with the San Antonio Symphony. As a child, Hendricks was a nonstop reader in libraries located in the family home and in Alice and often read under the covers with a flashlight.
Her father, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, had a distinguished legal, political, and civic career. He negotiated the first contract for water in perpetuity for the city of Alice and worked tirelessly to ensure the construction of Choke Canyon Dam. He was the first recipient of the Texas Bar Association General Practitioner of the Year and was an ardent supporter of Lyndon Baines Johnson, chairing LBJ s 1948 senatorial election as the Jim Wells County attorney. Her mother was the 1940 National Collegiate Debate Champion while a student at Baylor University and taught 5th grade in Alice for nearly two decades.
She was preceded in death by her parents, Homer and Barbara Dean. Survivors include her husband, Bill and her son, Jack; her sister, Grace Black and family of Austin; her cousins, Terry Josey of Waco, Dean Corley Myane of Blanco, and Gen. (Ret.) John D.W. Corley of Virginia, and their families; and many friends and colleagues.
Services will be at 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, August 4, 2022 at the Tondre-Guinn Funeral Home, 1016 Lorenzo Street, Castroville, Texas. Visitation will be one hour before the service with interment in the Castroville Community Cemetery following the service.
Gifts in Barbara s honor may be sent to https://donate.tx.als.org/Barbara or the state headquarters of the ALS Association, 14555 Dallas Parkway #100-219, Dallas, Texas 75254, or to the Arbor Day Foundation, arborday.org or visit shop.arborday.org/commemorative-forests to choose a forest where trees can be planted in her memory, or to a charity of your choice.