Local educator, farmer, and beloved community member Josette Hendrix died unexpectedly on April 1st from injuries sustained after an as-yet-unexplained accident. She was 68 years old.
Josette was born Josephine Despotova in Sofia, Bulgaria to parents Boris and Georgette Despotov. The family fled their Soviet-occupied country when Josette was eleven years old, living first in what was then Yugoslavia before settling in Rome, Italy until a refugee organization helped them to gain asylum in the United States. The experience of moving through four different languages and cultures by the age of fifteen marked her deeply, and would contribute to her passionate advocacy of cultural understanding later in life.
After attending high school at Kenwood Academy of the Sacred Heart in Albany, NY, she majored in psychology and education at Wesleyan University, where she met Tom Hendrix through their co-ed fraternity. After marrying, the couple relocated to Seattle, where they had three children, Jenny, Danielle, and Samuel. They moved to Whidbey Island in 1989, where the children attended Whidbey Island Waldorf School. They divorced in 1997.
In 1996, Josette founded the Northwest Language Academy (Now NWLA Cultural Center) as a place to foster cultural intelligence and celebration of diversity. An enthusiatic educator, she used her creativity, love of culture, innovative teaching skills, and strong belief in the transformative role of education to teach foreign language and cultural literacy to adults and children. Working in partnership with local schools, businesses and non-profit organizations, Josette devoted over 25 years to developing this cultural resource for the enrichment of the local community and beyond. She was most recently involved in bringing cultural curricula to South Whidbey public schools and creating programming in partnership with the Tulalip tribe and Seattle’s Congolese refugee community.
Josette liked to say that there was never a time in her life – including at boarding school – when she didn’t have a garden. On Whidbey, her own garden expanded and evolved over the decades into Shipki Farm, a bio-intensive mini farm where she raised chickens and dairy goats and grew a true bounty of organic fruits and vegetables. Her eggs were widely regarded to be the best on Whidbey, and she had recently become an accomplished cheese-maker as well. She had plans to create a food forest on her land, and spoke of planing trees for her beloved grandchildren. As with everything she did, she grew food in order to share it with family, friends, and the larger community.
Josette was well-known on Whidbey for her generosity with meals and her love of intelligent debate. A voracious reader with boundless curiousity and desire to learn, she wrote songs and poems and relished a bad joke. From her 20s on, she was inspired and guided by her teacher, Prem Rawat, whose message of peace resonated strongly with her and contributed to her deep gratitude for what she viewed as the gift of being alive. She found great joy and solace in walking the beaches and forests of Whidbey, alone and in the company of her many dear friends.
She is survived by her mother, Georgette; her daughter Jenny Hendrix with her husband Zach Dunham and their children Simone, 4, and Jonah, 1; her daughter Danielle Sola and her children Quentin, 6, and Sybil, 3; and her son Samuel Hendrix with his fiance Nicole Parnell and their son Warren, seven months. As a mother and grandmother, her boundless love, creativity, and ability to be truly present was apparent to all who knew her. She is deeply missed.
