For Maggie Wisniewski, running the New York City Marathon is about more than crossing a finish line. It is a tribute to her grandfather, PJ Henning, a beloved Chicago band director whose passion for music left a lasting impact on many of his students, including Maggie.
After losing PJ to pancreatic cancer, Maggie found a way to channel her grief into running and honoring his legacy through fundraising towards finding a cure for pancreatic cancer.
As she prepares to take on her first full marathon, she reflects on what a great man her grandfather was and all that she has learned from him.
“He was the best grandfather ever. He was just so fun; we were never, not laughing with him. I’m so lucky that I got to be so close to him. A lot of people lose their grandfathers at a much younger age, but I have never known a life without my grandpa.”
Impacting Many Lives
Maggie’s grandfather, PJ Henning, was a talented man, having been a high school band director on the South Side of Chicago for the entirety of his musical career. “He was the most remarkable person I’ve ever known in my life,” Maggie said.
“The way he led a room and the way he inspired students is unlike anything I think I’ve ever seen. He was all in on everything in life. All in on family, friends, music. He always said he loved his job so much, it felt like he had never worked a day in his life.”
PJ was the type of person who left people with some sense of joy or belonging after every interaction with them. “He made everyone feel welcome. He was tough and held his students to high standards, but it was because he knew they were capable of great things.” Maggie said.
Having a big personality, PJ was the life of every party, the loudest person in the room. Maggie recalls many cherished memories with him. He would let Maggie and her sisters give him makeovers; he would attend every performance, concert, graduation, and basketball game. But for Maggie, some of her favorite memories with him were what she called the “quieter moments”.
“Every Friday, without fail, after rehearsals and before we got on the highway to go back to school, we would stop at Dunkin Donuts and get a vanilla long john and laugh and put on music. It was just Maggie and Papa time.”
It was important to Maggie and her family for her to play in her grandfather’s band as a musician. So, every Thursday night when she was in seventh and eighth grade, she would sleep over at her grandparents’ house and attend her grandfather’s rehearsal on Friday mornings.
“I went to a different school than the one he taught at, so I got special exemption from my school because I was going to practice with Papa and the bands on the South Side of Chicago, and then he would drive me back to the West Side for school.”
When PJ passed, he wanted his services to be a big celebration. He was involved in almost every aspect of planning. “It was kind of hilarious,” Maggie shared. “He was very particular and also very stubborn.”
“Towards the end, when planning his services, he really wanted to be involved in the process, and when I say involved, I mean he was literally reading people’s eulogies and was like, ‘No, you can’t say that at my funeral, absolutely not!’ It was hilarious.”
PJ wanted people to be laughing, having a good time, and telling stories. He wanted a celebration, and that’s exactly what he got! With 400 people in attendance at PJ’s celebration of life, Maggie was overwhelmed by the love for her grandfather.
“I had people come up to me saying, ‘I remember when he brought you into the band room for the first time right after you were born’ and ‘You don’t know me, but I remember when you were a baby, and you were at this show.’”
For Maggie, this showed her even more how much of an impact that her grandfather made on people’s lives and how many students’ lives he had touched. “I was like, wow, you have made an impact on thousands of people throughout your career. What a gift to be able to say that you’ve done that.”
Grieving with Gratitude
PJ passed in January 2026 after being diagnosed not long before, at the end of August 2025.
PJ started feeling sick towards the end of the summer of 2025 and went in for a routine checkup, when the doctors decided to take a closer look at him. After being diagnosed, PJ was treated with chemotherapy, which made him feel worse almost immediately, so he stopped treatment.
“He was like, ‘I’m not spending the last few months of my life feeling horrible,’ so after chemo is really when things accelerated,” Maggie said.
“I knew that he was scared, and I knew that it was bad because the last time we went out to lunch together. He just couldn’t eat anything. He was so ill, and that was before he was even on a ton of meds. He just got really quiet, and he was not usually a quiet person by any means.”
Maggie lives in New York, and her family is in Chicago, so she would go home frequently but especially after hearing about her grandfather’s diagnosis. “In a weird way it made my family even closer.”
“I know so many people who go through tragedy where it has the opposite effect, and we are very close; he was the patriarch, he was our guiding light in so many ways,” Maggie shared.
“I wasn’t nervous that it was gonna have a negative effect, but it’s funny people ask ‘how do you guys normally manage tragedy like this?’ and I was like ‘I have no idea, we’ve never gone through something like this so I don’t know the effect that this is going to have.”
Now, Maggie feels as if she is making progress with her grief and is starting to feel a lot of gratitude about going through something like this with the family that she was born into, alongside the immense sadness that comes with it all.
“From the get-go, he cultivated the type of family that I have now. He was like, ‘Sorry you guys are going to be close, figure it out. We are going to be a close family, and you guys are going to love each other.’”
Prepping For A Marathon
Maggie wasn’t always a runner, not until about three years ago. Maggie has always been one for staying active and going to the gym, but during her senior year of college, she started going on runs with her best friend, who runs triathlons.
“I hated it at first, and then I thought, maybe one day I’ll start to like it, so I just kept at it until I finally caught the bug and actually started a run club at my college, my senior year with one of my best friends.”
Since then, Maggie has completed three half marathons and has thought it was finally time to commit to a full marathon, with the added goal of fundraising for a good cause.
“Running is like my therapy. It is my safe space; whenever I am going through anything work-related, personal life-related, whatever it is, I can go for a run. My grandpa never half-did anything in his life, so I’m like, I guess we gotta go for a full marathon; here we go all in!”
Maggie knew she wanted to commit to a full marathon one day and knew she wanted to do it with a charity, so finding Project Purple was the perfect excuse to check this goal off her bucket list.
With running already in Maggie’s everyday fitness routine, her training process has been easy to step into. She’s added more miles and, of course, has gotten new running shoes, which is always extra motivating!
On race day, Maggie will be joined by her family cheering her on from the sidelines. “I have a big village coming to support me, which will be so lovely. My mom is already like ‘We need to rent out a bar for after the race!’”
“I have dreams of turning onto Fifth Avenue with the crowds cheering, and I’m just so excited for the whole weekend!”
Remembering with Music
Running the New York Marathon in honor of PJ has been an outlet not only for Maggie, but for her entire family. It has brought them closer together and helped them find positivity in grieving such an amazing man.
“My family has really found a lot of joy in getting to send out my page to people that he’s known in every chapter of his life, and it just means so much that I get to, in my own little way, help another family who is going through this tragedy or has gone through it and is actively fighting to hold on to their loved ones.”
PJ was more than just a great-grandfather to Maggie but also an inspiration for her passion for music, the reason why she has the career that she does today. For that reason, in addition to running a marathon for pancreatic cancer, Maggie also hosted a cabaret-style fundraiser concert on August 20th in New York City to honor her grandfather’s deep love for music.
“He was my biggest cheerleader in everything that I did. He’s the reason I’m an artist. He’s the reason I’m a performer. He truly taught be everything I know. He taught me the difference between playing notes on a page versus making music. He’s the first person who inspired me to do that.”
“I hope to God that we fund a world one day where we don’t have to run for things like this, but unfortunately that is the world that we live in, and if I can do my small part and honor my grandfather in the process. I know I’d be making him proud.”
If you’d like to run or participate in an event of your own for Project Purple, visit our events page.
