Henry Norgaard was a visionary thinker.

He was also a man known for solving people’s problems, his wife of 52 years Clara Norgaard told the Herald.

She said the two of them are business-orientated people and made a good team. While Henry would look at something and say ‘I can do that better,’ Clara was focused on the practical side, saying it was her job to find the money for said betterments.

Henry enjoyed helping people who did things for the community, especially for Merritt’s youth, Clara said.

“If somebody really, really had a good idea but needed help getting it off the ground, Henry would be there to give him some help,” she said.

A memorial for Henry, who passed away from lung cancer on Sept. 13, will take place tomorrow at the Civic Centre at 3 p.m.

“He’s missed,” Norgaard said.

She said she is expecting about 400 people to attend the memorial.

Henry moved to Canada from Denmark in 1953 and settled in Merritt in 1958. In 1960, he became a Canadian citizen and in 1961, he and Clara married.

Clara, who’s originally from Edmonton, also came to Merritt in 1958 and first met Henry when she was working at a local movie theatre.

Her father owned a plumbing shop, and one day while she was helping do some work on a house Henry had built, Henry asked Clara if she’d like to go to a movie with him.

“And I said, ‘Well, I work at the movie theatre on the weekend, but I’ll come and sit beside you when I’m finished cashing out all the cash,’” Clara said.

“And that’s how we, basically, met,” Norgaard said, noting she had met him before, but until their first date, only knew him as a customer of her father’s business.

Henry and Clara started Norgaard Ready Mix in 1960, the year before they got married.

Clara said quick-mix cement was fairly new back in the ’60s and Henry wanted to capitalize on that type of business.

“He saw the need, and we went for it,” Norgaard said.

She said neither of them had any experience in the concrete business, but they never viewed starting their own business just prior to getting married as an intimidating venture.

“Never looked at it that way. We knew it was going to be tough slugging but we stuck to it and we worked it out,” Norgaard said.

As for their relationship, Clara said it was a solid one.

“If we disagreed, we gave the reasons why we disagreed,” she said.

There was also a motto in the Norgaard household.

“We had a sign that said, ‘The opinion of the husband of this household is not necessarily that of management,’” she said, noting she ran the house and was the company accountant.

The pair had a daughter and son together and also have two grandchildren.

Norgaard said her husband was a stern father in the sense that there were always consequences for any actions that got his kids in trouble.

“He was very fair about what the consequences were,” Clara said.

His oldest granddaughter referred to him as “Grandpa Einstein” for his knack for solving problems.

“She had some difficulty sometimes in math and between her father and her grandfather, she was able to figure out how math actually works,” Clara said with a laugh.

Henry was heavily involved in the community over the years, serving on city council, working for the chamber of commerce as well as serving on various boards both locally and provincially.

He was also a founding member of the BC Ready Mix Concrete Association.

Henry dedicated much of his time to various community-building projects, such as getting the skate park at Central Park built and running caravans along the Coquihalla Highway to promote the building of it.

“We were pretty much isolated in the valley here,” Clara said, noting to get to Vancouver before the Coquihalla Highway was built one would have to drive toward either Princeton or Spences Bridge.

To get the skate park built, Norgaard said her husband helped local kids raise money through fundraising activities such as bottle drives.

Henry was diagnosed with mesothelioma — a type of lung cancer caused from asbestos — four years ago.

“Being very practical about everything that we did, we had a long discussion about it and we decided that we would live life to the fullest,” Clara said.

She said after Henry was diagnosed, they made many trips to Copenhagen and toured much of Europe over the next four years.

“He has family back there,” Clara said, adding the trips were very educational for her and their children.

“To us, it was the way we felt we had to deal with the issue. We accepted the fact that there was no cure and we knew what the outcome was going to be,” she said.

Henry was 84 when he passed away.

“If he had been a young man, that would’ve been a way different story, but he had an opportunity to live a full life,” she said.