May 17, 1963 – August 9, 2023

PHOTO BY CHUCK HOVEN

Saturday, August 13, 2022; Lincoln Heights Block Club party and tribute to Henry Senyak, Porco Lounge, 2527 W. 25th Street: Henry Senyak holds up a Certificate of Appreciation from the Lincoln Heights Block Club noting the formal dedication of the Henry P. Senyak Lincoln Heights Development Fund.

PHOTO BY CHUCK HOVEN

Thursday, May 18, 2023, Tremont West Development Corporation Annual Meeting, Scranton Road Bible Church, 3095 Scranton Road: Tremont West Development Corporation presented Henry Senyak with the Gail Long Lifetime Achievement Award for many years of sharing his time, efforts, skills, and experience with the people in his community.

Henry Senyak’s funeral was concelebrated by four priests, who all knew Henry and had ties to the Tremont neighborhood to which he dedicated many hours of service. In delivering the eulogy for Henry Senyak at his funeral at St. Augustine Church on August 18^th, St. Augustine Pastor Bill O’Donnell spoke of Henry as a person who had used the gift of the time he had been given on earth to make the world a better place. Father O’Donnell spoke of Henry’s staying within the community where he was born and finding a way “to make a significant contribution.”

   Henry Senyak was a person who would not give up. “If he judged something important, he stayed with it,” Father O’Donnell said in describing Senyak’s tenacity. Father O’Donnell challenged those in attendance at the funeral saying, “someone has to take Henry’s place in being committed to the common good of those on the margins that have been forgotten.” Father O’Donnell urged those in attendance to “learn from Henry’s life, how he made change grounded in commitment to the common good.”

   Father O’Donnell shared a bit of Henry’s life story noting that while Henry took advanced placement and honors classes at Cleveland Central Catholic, he decided to learn a trade rather than go to college and pursued a career as an electrician and communications specialist. Father O’Donnell also spoke of Henry as a genius whose education did not happen in the classroom, but in life.

   Long time Plain Press readers have read of many of the accomplishments of Henry Senyak as the leader of the Lincoln Heights Block Club, member of various committees of the Tremont West Development Corporation and his time spent riding around at night to record outed streetlights so Cleveland Public Power could repair them.

   An article in the September 2022 Plain Press titled “Lincoln Heights Block Club honors Henry Senyak for his many contributions to the neighborhood and the City of Cleveland” describes some of Senyak’s accomplishments and some of the attributes described by Father O’Donnell of a tenacious advocate willing to learn from life and willing to use that knowledge to help the community he cared about.

   The article notes that Henry Senyak was a member of the local block club, and that “his involvement in neighborhood issues began to escalate due to his and his mother’s concerns with noise and unruly patrons at the Starkweather, a bar across the street from where Henry and his mother resided above the Senyak family’s former drycleaner storefront.”

   Henry Senyak, age 60, died on August 9^th after battling cancer of the esophagus for over a year. Henry is survived by many first and second cousins, aunts, uncles, and other relations. He considered his community, friends, and neighbors to be family members, too.