Lou Hencken always smelled like fish and chicken on the way home from work in East St. Louis.

Despite the embarrassment he felt on the bus ride home, Wilson Poultry and Fish Company was the best thing that ever happened to the now-interim president of Eastern.

“It was the type of thing where I said ‘I do not want to do this for the rest of my life,'” the son of a furniture store owner said. “I knew that was not what I wanted, and I worked with people who for them, it was a full-time job.

“It caused me to work that much harder at school. It was a great experience.”

At the time, Hencken was a graduate of Belleville High School and was attending Southwestern Illinois College.

The future veteran of student affairs wanted to be a teacher then.

After earning his associate’s degree, Hencken, the first of his family to be college-bound, chose Eastern above Western Illinois University and Illinois State University, the only other universities he applied for.

He choose Eastern because of its smaller size and good reputation, just some of the traits Hencken cites as reasons for his career of more than three decades at the university.

Rules were strict at Eastern in the mid-60s when Hencken was an upperclassman. Women had to be in by 10:30 p.m. on weeknights and by 1 a.m. on weekends.

“The university got really liberal when it let girls stay out till 2 a.m. on Homecoming Weekend,” he said.

There weren’t as many bars in Charleston back then, and the drinking age was 21. Hencken, a B-average student and a Thomas Hall food service employee, claims he didn’t participate in the “keggers” held in farmer’s fields outside of town.

Teaching didn’t last long as one of Hencken’s desires. A stint in student teaching showed him it may not be for him because of the heavy workload he had.

“I thought ‘I don’t know if I want to do this’,” he said.

One thing he did know, however, was that he wanted to, in his own way, “make a difference” in people’s lives.

A flyer announcing openings for residence assistants gave him an idea about how to accomplish that without being a teacher. As a graduate student of education/guidance and counseling in 1967, he applied and got it.

“I thought, well, maybe I want to go on and be a guidance counselor,” he said about why he was attracted to being an RA. “I thought this is where I could really make a difference.”

Hencken knew he was on the right track in student affairs because of the sense of accomplishment he felt after helping some of the men on his floors in Douglas and Stevenson stay in school.

“They were thinking about dropping out of school and things like that,” he said. “And I really felt I helped them make the right choices.”

That feeling of “making a difference” finally nudged Hencken on the path to being a resident director, assistant director of housing, director of housing and vice president for student affairs. Ultimately he would lead the university as interim president, calming Eastern during a time of internal turmoil.

He had other options though. As assistant director of housing, a “major hotel chain” offered Hencken a position. But that was too “corporate” for him.

In addition, Hencken had a chance to join the Air Force, take a position at Miami University of Ohio or vice presidential positions at other universities. Regardless, he stayed with Eastern.

“I liked the size, I liked the people,” he said of Eastern “A lot of people here are like me, they came for three or four years and they’re still here.

“It’s the people who work here. For a lot of faculty and staff it’s more than their job, it’s their life. It is those people that devote that extra time and do the extra things that make this a great institution.”

Through it all, Hencken enjoyed his positions because he was helping students. In the Housing Office during the 1970s and ’80s, he worked to expand visitation hours and dining center options. He also helped get residence halls equipped with phone and cable lines students could bring in phones and televisions and rent Microfridges for the then-barren dorm rooms.

He said he tried to spread a philosophy throughout the residence halls of making them places “students wanted to live.”

“Attitude is contagious,” he said.

As vice president for student affairs, Hencken also found happiness in making a difference in students’ lives.

“I remember the first day of classes, seeing a young man sitting out in front of the Records Office… he looked lost, completely lost,” he said. “I sat down and said ‘how are you doing,’ he said ‘man, I feel completely overwhelmed.”

Hencken then took him to get his classes and sent him on his way.

“After that I would periodically see him around campus… and as I was sitting at commencement I remember as he crossed the stage.

“My favorite day of the year is graduation day,” Hencken said with a pleasant, reflecting smile. “When I see those students walk across the stage I know that somebody here made a difference in their lives.”