World traveler gets back to roots on Brunswick spread

Frank Henry stands next to the anti-aircraft gun on his property that is dotted with hedgerows, plantings of native grasses and birdhouses, all in an effort to promote wildlife-friendly practices, in Winnabow on Monday, Feb. 13, 2012.
Buy Photo Photo by Mike Spencer

By Ben Steelman
Ben.Steelman@StarNewsOnline.com

Published: Saturday, February 18, 2012 at 12:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Friday, February 17, 2012 at 11:26 a.m.

“Winnabow International Airport,” reads the sign on the chain-link fence off Greenhill Road, just a little west of Winnabow. “Airplanes have right of way.”

That's a joke, but it's not that far off the truth. Frank P. Henry's driveway really is an operational air strip, noted on aeronautical charts and designated 77NC by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Where most country homes would have an old garage, Henry has a hangar with a well-kept single-engine plane parked and ready to go.

It's the sort of hideaway appropriate for a man who spent a fair chunk of his life as a world traveler.

As an undergraduate, Henry paddled a canoe “about a thousand miles by myself” along a tributary of the Amazon River collecting biological specimens for his alma mater, Wilmington College. At least one of those specimens, a previously undiscovered lizard, found its way into the collections of the Smithsonian Institution.

His trophy cases are stuffed with South American butterflies and beetles, neatly labeled and pinned.

Army service interrupted Henry's studies, and by the time he earned his diploma in 1973, his school was the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Not long after that, he was flying around Alaska as a bush pilot. Photos around his house show Henry grinning with heavily-bundled Eskimos and near-naked Amazonian Indians.

These days, Henry describes himself as “just a shade-tree mechanic.” His business, O&E Enterprises (short for “Odds and Ends,” he jokes), installs commercial water and sewer lines, does concrete work, resurfaces parking lots and handles “just a lot of miscellaneous stuff,” he said.