She Gives Disabled an Active Role

Dixie Sutter Henrikson had no intention of starting a nonprofit agency 31 years ago. She just wanted a place for her daughter to play.

Deborah, now 35, has Down syndrome, and in 1969 Henrikson and another mother of a disabled child fretted in a Studio City park about the lack of recreational activities for children with special needs.

“Other kids had Little League, the YMCA, Boy Scouts and Girls,” Henrikson recalled. “I wanted Deborah to have something too.”

Henrikson co-founded Activities for Retarded Children, a United Way agency offering 110 children and adults, mostly from the San Fernando Valley, with developmental disabilities a place to socialize and play sports, take adult education classes and go on field trips.

The center also offers respite for their family members and friends.

ARC’s co-founder, Lillian Craddock, died last week.

“I find that most charities come to be because two or three people have a certain need,” said Henrikson, 79, executive director of the center, a converted five-bedroom house on Whitsett Avenue in North Hollywood.

Five years ago, the center, which also boasts a garden and gymnasium, acquired a six-unit apartment building to encourage independent living.

Honored numerous times, Henrikson, a Valley Village resident, also conducts an English Hand-Bell Choir composed of people with disabilities. The choir has appeared on local television shows and performed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and United Way functions.

“It is beautiful to hear,” said Henrikson, who hopes the hand-bell group will one day be invited to play at a presidential inauguration. “It will make you cry. It shows that people with disabilities have abilities.”

“Dixie has just put her heart and soul into the center,” said Joe Haggerty, president of United Way of Greater Los Angeles. “She’s just that kind of person. It’s her unique calling in life.”

Henrikson said she has two callings--helping those with developmental disabilities, and speaking out against violence, particularly in movies and on TV. “Those are my two soapboxes,” she said.

Eleven years ago, the eldest of her four sons was brutally beaten and killed outside his law office in Oakland. A pack of robbers, two of whom were convicted of criminal charges and imprisoned, kicked and punched Eric Henrikson, 41, for less than $5, according to his mother and newspaper accounts.

Eric Henrikson was the married father of a 5-year-old daughter and a 3-day-old son.

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“One human being is not an island,” said Dixie Henrikson, who has a photo of her son with his wife and baby boy on the morning of the murder.

“He was a husband and a father as well as a son, a son-in-law, a brother, an uncle, a nephew, a cousin, a friend to many, a lawyer, a law partner, a rugby player, a coach and so many other things. We are all a product of one another.

“Everything was all taken away.”

A lawyer specializing in criminal appeals, Eric Henrikson graduated from Yale University.

In 1972, he earned a magna cum laude degree from Harvard Law School, where he edited the university’s prestigious Law Review.

“There’s no telling what Eric could have been,” said Henrikson, noting that Al Gore and George W. Bush attended Harvard and Yale, respectively. “Maybe he could have been president.”

Henrikson said she mourns her slain son daily. She also misses her husband, Harold, a foreign service attorney and Harvard Law graduate, who died of cancer at age 84.

“Harold is in his place,” Henrikson said. “It’s the way things should be. It’s normal and natural. I can get over it.

“But losing my son,” she said, weeping, “in the most unnatural, unnecessary way. I can’t get over it.”

At United Way fund-raisers, Henrikson has spoken out against violence, but she said she wants to do more. “I’m still looking for a way to honor my son,” she said.

Her salvation has been Activities for Retarded Children.

“I’m so busy year-round,” she said. “The only way to be happy is to do something meaningful with your life.”

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