I have learned a few things from Coach Billy Henderson over the years.
1. Arrive 15 minutes early to every appointment. (If you’re five minutes early, you’re 10 minutes late.)
2. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember what you said.
3. Always speak to everybody in your path … from the janitor in the hallway to the president of the bank.
4. Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side.
The year I spent with Coach Henderson while writing his biography — “It Can Be Done: The Billy Henderson Story” — was one of the most memorable times of my life. And these years since the book was published in 2005 have been rewarding, too. This man has touched more lives than anyone I have ever known.
The book was a journey for both of us. I conducted most of the interviews at his “office” (the couch in the lounge at the Holiday Inn in Athens). I’ve heard him tell a number of people I was his “psychiatrist.”
I may have been. But he was my teacher. And coach.
I went to visit the old ball coach a few weeks ago. (He may qualify as “old” because he is 83 , but the man still works out six days a week at the YMCA.) I arrived right at lunchtime, which was good timing because his longtime housekeeper, Shirley, had made me a sandwich.
We talked about a lot of things. His heart was very heavy. His grandson, Zach, died unexpectedly a few days before Christmas. Zach was 25 years old.
Coach Henderson has had a lot of sadness in his life, more tragedy than most of us will ever know. Of course, his oldest son, Brad, was killed in a car accident in 1964. And his wife, Fosky, died about this time last year after a long struggle with dementia.
He shared a lot of other things, too. He told me just a few days earlier two of his former players at Clarke Central in Athens — Derek Dooley and David Perno — had come by to see him. Dooley is now the head football coach at Tennessee, and Perno is the head baseball coach at Georgia.
I have never been around Coach Henderson when I haven’t learned something. I always go away a better person, just from being around him.
As I was leaving, he told me he loved me.
I told him I love him, too, because I do.