Man saves heirloom desk from bonfire, returns it to Millersville University decades later

John McHenry is a giver.

A few years after he retired from teaching industrial arts in York City schools in the 1980s, he started making soup in his Jacobus home each week, only to give most of it away.

He delivered it to friends, many of whom became like family, and people who had fallen on hard times or needed something to raise their spirits. He stopped the soup deliveries in May 2013, when he turned 80. But he estimates he probably gave away $40,000 worth of soup over 20 years.

McHenry allows a farmer who lives near his home to cut his grass on about 5 acres he and his wife owns, and feed it to his cows. He knows he could probably get payment in exchange for that grass if he wanted, but he likes giving it away.

McHenry doesn’t consider himself altruistic. He’s self-serving.

“I give on my terms,” the 85-year-old said.

It feels good to give, and that good feeling has been a motivation for him.

But McHenry’s most recent act of perceived generosity isn’t even about that good feeling.

It’s about setting something right after 130 years. It’s about putting something he came to possess, but that’s never really been his, back in its rightful spot.

It’s about McHenry knowing, before he gets to the end of his life, that he’s been the steward he was called to be back in 1956, when he was studying at the Millersville State Teachers College, and he brought home a beauty that’s been with him ever since.

Called to take care

It was like listening to the three witches in MacBeth, McHenry said.

Then 23, he was going to school to become a teacher. He staggered his schooling at the Millersville State Teachers College, which would become Millersville University, because he served in the military during the Korean War.

It was homecoming, and McHenry was moving back to campus, having previously lived with his future in-laws in York in order to shorten his drive to student-teaching.

He was at the dorm, tidying his room hours before a bonfire was set to blaze on campus when he heard three women chattering about something in a room down the hall.

They were looking at something and talking about how they wanted to turn whatever it was into something else. One said she wanted a table on which to make candy, another said she wanted a work table and the third said it didn’t matter what they wanted, since the varsity club was going to burn the object on the bonfire that night.

McHenry walked in the direction of the voices, and once the women left, he peeked his head into the room to see what they’d been eyeing.

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It was a heap of timber. Walnut, but covered in black soot from fine coal ash that was burned in a furnace in a nearby building. It was once a desk, McHenry saw, and it must have been moved into this room for storage.

What was its history? How long had it sat in shambles, out-of-sight? Could he return it to its original condition?

McHenry always loved fine furniture. He saw promise in the piece, and wanted a chance to clean it up and fix it.

He poked his head into an assistant professor’s office and asked her about the desk. She said the varsity club boys were planning to burn it at the bonfire.

McHenry told her he was interested in saving it.

The professor’s eyes lit up. She was keen on the idea of saving the desk instead of burning it or transforming it into something else.

She told him she would be leaving the building for awhile, giving him a silent nod that no one would be the wiser if he gathered the pieces of the desk up while she was gone.
He grabbed a friend and hauled the pieces of the desk, including the tambour door, down to his room. He covered the stack with a sheet and drew the blinds, making sure no one during the busy homecoming open house would discover the stash.

Inside one of the unshattered components of the desk, McHenry found a letter addressed to E.O. Lyte, a former principal of the Millersville State Normal School, which is what Millersville University was called from the 1850s until the 1920s.

Lyte was at Millersville from the late 1850s until 1912. Even those who don’t know his name likely know the song he’s credited with writing, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”
McHenry had seen the Lyte name before, on one of the school’s buildings.

He found more evidence, provenance, on the desk that tied it to Lyte.

Once McHenry knew Lyte had owned the desk, he realized that even if he cleaned and fixed it, he wouldn’t keep it forever.

“I knew it wasn’t mine,” McHenry said. “I was a steward.”

Late that homecoming night, he pulled his 1946 Dodge Limousine into the parking lot near his dormitory, and loaded the pieces of the desk. He drove to his future in-laws’ home in York, and showed his future father-in-law, Chester Ely, his find.

“He said, ‘Oh, it’s a desk! Oh my god, it’s going to be gorgeous,” McHenry recalled. Ely loved furniture, and he loved walnut wood, McHenry said.

Ely let McHenry store the desk at his home.

Eventually, McHenry did restore the desk. He and his wife, Karen, with whom he celebrated 61 years of marriage on Dec. 28, have had it in each of their homes.

Their children have used it as scaffolding for blanket forts. It was a favorite hiding spot. One of their children read under the desk on rainy days. Another frequently napped there.

The desk saw his family grow, and McHenry’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren, grew up playing with the desk, just as their parents and grandparents did.

McHenry, called Papaw by his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, read Christmas stories seated at the desk.

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But now, McHenry said, it’s time to give the desk back to Millersville University. 
The time feels right, he said.

Karen said she believes his health was among the motivations to return the desk now.

“He’s had all kinds of illnesses, and he’s come out of all of them,” she said.

But tomorrow isn’t guaranteed for anyone.

Millersville picks up donation

On Tuesday morning, McHenry was eating breakfast at his dining table when three men from Millersville University arrived to take his donation back to campus.

McHenry supervised as they took the desk apart to make it easier for transport.
He told them about its history, gave them pointers on its care.

He knew he needed to give it up. He watched the men take it away.

“We give,” McHenry said. “And we get back.”

The desk has repaid his effort to save it in memories that have lasted his lifetime.