By Taylor Jenkins

Hennamen on the Altoona High School football team. Photo courtesy of Tom Hennaman.

For my entire life, Grandpa Tom has been nothing more than a loving, kind, and funny presence. He was the man who ran the local farmers market, knew everyone in Culpepper by name, and never missed a chance to compete with me in basketball, ping-pong, or anything else where someone could walk away a winner. Up until about three years ago, I had no idea about the incredible life of service and duty my grandfather had lived.

Hennaman’s story begins in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where he grew up surrounded by small‑town life and football. At Altoona High School, he played on the football field as both a fullback and a linebacker. After high school, Hennaman attended Shippensburg College for two years but later decided that college wasn’t the path he wanted to take. He and a friend, who shared similar feelings, decided to quit college and move to Florida. After just a few months, they ran out of money and came home. This prompted a decision that would shape the rest of Hennaman’s life: in 1961, he enlisted in the United States Army. 

Following training camp, he waited with the rest of his unit to hear their assignments. When his name was finally called—“Tom Hennaman, Ethiopia”—he was shocked. “I didn’t even know where Ethiopia was,” Hennaman explained. 

He spent two years stationed in Asmara, then part of Ethiopia and now the capital of Eritrea. At the time, Emperor Haile Selassie maintained a strong relationship with the United States, and the American military presence there was considered prestigious. Local workers shined American soldiers’ boots, made their beds, and kept the base running smoothly. 

There, Hennaman specialized in communications, with a role more specifically tied to intercepting and transmitting encrypted messages. “Morse code was a second language to me,” Hennaman added. Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union demanded communication specialists to be able to transmit all types of encoded messages coming from many different countries. 

When his service in Ethiopia ended, he traveled throughout Europe before returning home to Altoona in 1966, unaware that his next chapter would be even more extraordinary. Not long after returning home, the phone rang. The caller introduced himself as Mike Citradies. He said he was on his way to Penn State to visit his daughter and wondered if he could meet with Hennaman about a possible job. With skepticism Hennaman’s father, a detective, did background digging and found that Citradies was a CIA recruiter. 

Hennaman accepted the meeting and shortly after agreed to join the Central Intelligence Agency as a communications specialist. Soon he was on his way to Washington, D.C, working at CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia.

After Hennaman spent three years in Virginia, the CIA opened a small facility in Florida. With tensions between the US and Fidel Castro’s Communist Cuba at their peak, the agency needed specialists who understood communications and could operate close to the action. Hennaman was sent to Miami, near Government Cut, a manmade shipping channel, where he worked for four years. During this period, he served on temporary duty deployments that sent him to major cities and foreign countries for days or weeks at a time. Each mission had a specific purpose, and each required secrecy. To protect his identity, the CIA gave him an alias: Maynard E. Lollis, a name that he found “embarrassing.” He could not share his real name or personal details with anyone he met, and Cuba became his primary focus. 

Hennaman’s next major assignment took him to Thailand for three years. There, he worked at the American embassy but lived under a cover story, that he was part of the Department of the Army. Even within the embassy walls, he could not say he was CIA. “No country wants a person that works at the CIA in their country,” he later explained. His official role was tied to government communications, a believable and necessary disguise. 

Photo credit: Minna Vogel.

Life in Thailand came with unusual privileges. He recalled being “treated like royalty,” with maids who cleaned his home, cooked his meals, and tended to his yard. After Thailand, Hennaman returned to Virginia in 1972. He was scheduled for an assignment in Jordan, but when his wife was about to give birth to their son, Brian, he decided to stay stateside. He continued his CIA work at the Warrenton Training Center in Northern Virginia, a facility known for its secrecy and specialized operations.

Eventually, a new opportunity emerged, one that would take him out of government service but keep him at the center of global communications. Hennaman received an offer from SWIFT, an international financial messaging network that transformed how funds were transferred across borders. Countries around the world used SWIFT’s systems, and by the time Hennaman joined, it had become a critical piece of global infrastructure. Security at the facility was intense: there were towering fences topped with barbed wire, thick pyracantha bushes with long thorns, and armed guards. Billions of dollars moved through SWIFT’s systems daily. 

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, some national security experts speculated that SWIFT could have been the next target, as its destruction would have crippled financial systems worldwide. Hennaman worked there until his retirement in 2005.

Photo credit: Minna Vogel.

When asked to reflect on his decision to join the Army, Hennaman replied, “Joining the army was the best decision I ever made. It taught me responsibility and showed me the power of teamwork. It allowed me to commit to something that was far greater than myself and it set me up for life, teaching me skills that I still use to this day.”

Everyone takes a different path in life. For some, it’s the path they design. For others, it’s the path life hands them. For Hennaman, serving his country was the path that gave his life purpose, direction, and happiness. 

Grandpa Tom has always been an inspiration to me. He’s taught me how to care for others, support the people around me, and make the most of every moment. Learning that he is a dedicated Army veteran and retired CIA officer has only deepened my admiration for him and made me prouder to call him my grandfather.

Featured image courtesy of Tom Hennaman.