Behind the Scenes

Behind the Scenes

Fireworks in the night sky. No one sees ground level preparations for the beautiful light shows that we ooh and aah over. Samuel Henry Henderson was one of the behind the scenes guys.

Henry had started working with fireworks as a boy running along railroad tracks with his best friend. They would stop every ten railroad ties and put a tiny firecracker on the rails. They’d dash into the bushes lining ditch along the railroad tracks, hide and watch as the train went by. Nothing ever happened, for which he was very grateful when he learned the danger of such childhood fun.  

When the two friends slept outside they would stare up at the sky, making up stories about the winking stars and the waxing or waning moon. When he was in his late fifties, he was responsible for most of the designing, filling out of purchase orders and directing his staff in placement and timing of a large fireworks show. He ran the whole annual operation with efficiency. He and his staff created beautiful bouquets of night flowers for the great community gatherings. It could be a dangerous job lighting explosives for a few minutes of someone else’s entertainment. But the aroma of burning explosive, the drift and smell of smoke added drama to the experience. As the smoke cleared, the sky came back into clarity, presenting a backdrop for the stars, silver moon and sometimes thin scattered clouds.

When he retired ten years later, he left all of his directions and instructions to his much younger replacement. But he couldn’t leave his vision. His vision had come from the nights he spent outside when the sky was clear, the moon was just a sliver and the stars held court in the black velvet sky. He tracked the stars, saw the different constellations and longed to add motion to them, to bring wonder to the children and families of his community.

This job, seasonal in nature, had been a sideline and a joy that had finally realized his dream of orchestrating showers of man made starlight that seemed to pour from the Big Dipper, and light shows reminiscent of the aurora borealis. Now passing the torch to a much younger man, he just might be letting another ‘boy’ realize a dream from his own childhood.

Henry stepped outside on a dark star lit night, looked up and smiled.

“Vision - It reaches beyond the thing that is, into 
the conception of what can be. Imagination 
gives you the picture.  Vision gives you 
the impulse to make the picture your own.

~ Robert Collier