This article deals with the death of Coach Billy Henderson's son, Brad.
THE FOLLOWING IS A TELEVISION INTERVIEW THAT AUBREY HAMMACK HAD WITH BILLY HENDERSON IN APRIL OF 1996, WHICH WAS ONE OF THREE. ON THIS PARTICULAR PROGRAM BILLY HENDERSON TALKS ABOUT THE DEATH OF HIS SON, BRAD. THIS WAS ONE OF MANY THAT AUBREY DID OVER THE COURSE OF 8 YEARS WHILE HE HAD A PROGRAM ON WCOX TV CALLED KEEPING IN TOUCH. IT ACCENTED VARIOUS PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL ISSUES IN THE MIDDLE GEORGIA COMMUNITY. THE PHOTO ABOVE IS THAT OF BILLY HENDERSON TAKEN FROM THE ACTUAL TELEVISION INTERVIEW.
KEEPING IN TOUCH
WITH AUBREY HAMMACK
(MUSIC PLAYS AS AN ANNOUNCER STATES THE BEST RECORD EVER 8 WINS 1 LOSS 1 TIE. BUT 1964 WILL BE REMEMBERED FOR ANOTHER REASON. THE RAMS STARTING QUARTERBACK WAS BILLY’S OLDEST SON, BRAD, A 16 YEAR OLD JUNIOR. WILLINGHAM HAD OPENED THE SEASON WITH A 25-0 WIN OVER WARNER ROBINS. DURING THE GAME, BRAD SET A NEW SCHOOL RECORD OF 173 YARDS PASSING. THE FOLLOWING MONDAY WAS LABOR DAY—SCHOOL WAS OUT SO BRAD SPENT THE EARLY AFTERNOON IN THE COMPANY OF HIS GIRLFRIEND, DIANE DRIGGERS. THE RAMS HAD FOOTBALL PRACTICE LATER IN THE DAY. TRAGICALLY, BRAD NEVER MADE IT.)
WELCOME TO THE PROGRAM. AS WE MENTIONED EARLIER THIS IS A 2 PART SERIES WITH COACH BILLY HENDERSON THE HEAD FOOTBALL COACH AND ATHLETIC DIRECTOR AT CLARK CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL IN ATHENS, GEORGIA AND AS MENTIONED IN THE 1ST PROGRAM THAT WAS TAPED WE TALKED ABOUT THE DEATH OF HIS SON AND THIS PROGRAM IS GOING TO BE ONE THAT HIGHLIGHTS THAT TIME IN 1964 LABOR DAY WEEKEND EXCLUSIVELY. THE WHOLE PROGRAM WILL IN FACT BE DEALTH OR DEALING WITH HIM TALKING ABOUT BRAD HENDERSON.
IN 1964 ON LABOR DAY WEEKEND, TRAGEDY STRUCK YOUR FAMILY—YOUR SON WAS SUDDENLY KILLED IN AN AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENT THAT CLAIMED THE LIFE OF HIS GIRLFRIEND AS WELL AS BRAD HENDERSON AND DIANE DRIGGERS.
CAN YOU RECONSTRUCT THAT DAY AS BEST YOU CAN FOR STARTERS TODAY?
There is no question about it; I can reconstruct it just like it happened yesterday or today. It was September 7, 1964 and most of my family was gathered on Westbury Drive right below Westgate Mall. My wife Foskey, her sister and her husband, Ray and Jack were there and their children. And the Friday previously we had played Warner Robins and Brad was our quarterback and I might say sometimes it’s like the game of golf and golf is like athletics. Sometimes you think you’ve got the world by the tail so to speak, you’ve got control of it. We had just whipped Warner Robins 21-0—Brad was a straight A student and we talked prior to the show and you asked me what profession I thought he would have gone into. I feel he would have been a dentist, a doctor, somewhere in the medical profession because everytime he would visit Athens or these other places, he would make a point to visit the dentist friends or doctor friends just to get a feeling of their profession but we had whipped Valdosta a couple of years in a row and it was you might say that was one of the highlights of my life at that particular time. I was 36 years old, had a 16 year old son playing quarterback and September 7 on Westbury Drive 1964, I’m waiting for Brad to pick me up and he didn’t show up at 3 o’clock, which was uncharacteristic of him. So I decided to walk. So I walked to the school, which was just a few blocks away. Probably didn’t have a good attitude about it, impatient, went to my office, sat down getting ready for the day’s practice and Mike Garvin, whom I was later to assist at Mt De Sales in 1970, walked in the door and said Billy two teenagers were killed out on Riverside Drive just a little while ago. So I said right away it was Brad. I picked up the phone ready to dial the hospital and the door was opened and it was Ray Wilkes, the assistant to the sheriff at that time. I looked into his eyes and I could tell exactly what had happened so I put the phone down and followed him to the car and then my mind begin to wander back to the last time I saw Brad was that morning about 10 o’clock. He and his buddies Rozie McKinney, Ralph Alligood, Richard Whitfield, who rode with Brad to the picnic and others but did not ride back, but would later, but they came by and Brad had just got his driver’s license in August, he was 16 on August 15th. He would be 45 today by the way, so I threw him the keys and that was the last time I saw him alive. The last time that Foskey saw him alive, she was in the backyard hanging his football uniform out on the line that she had washed and Brad used to take a lot of pride in the fact that his mother took care of his uniform the best of anybody in the world because she would get a toothbrush and clean the shoes and clean the shoestrings and whatever and it was hanging on the line. And the last time Foskey saw Brad alive was when he kissed her right on the cheek and she can still feel it now, but I go in the house, I say come with me—and we get in the Sheriff’s car and we drive to the hospital. We go through this corridor and there oh there must have been wall to wall people but you don’t see them because you’re in shock right now and the only thing have at that time is to get to my son, Brad and I did find him, pulled the sheet back, didn’t pull it back far enough to see the extent of his injuries but saw him-came back out saw Billy Beall and Johnny Stallings, and Dave Hill and others on the coaching staff and I said what in the world are you doing here, you’re supposed to be at practice so I send them back to practice I thought and of course that particular week we were getting ready for another opponent but that was the only practice I did miss. On Tuesday we practiced again. On Wednesday we buried Diane Driggers, our cheerleader and by the way if I could just a moment give a little history about Diane. Diane was a beautiful girl, not only outside but inside-One of the joys I had was playing golf with Brad and she would caddy and I’ve used this on many illustrations with the young ladies in school now in Athens, Georgia at Clark Central. It would be raining her hair would be in her face-but she wasn’t concerned about her hair, she was oblivious to anything except being happy and she was beautiful inside both and out but September 7th is a memory that will never be forgotten in our family.
Billy, I know Elizabeth Kubler Ross has written several books on death and dying. She talks about 5 stages we go through in dealing with death. I think the first stage is denial that she mentions. Did you see yourself in looking back when you first heard the word that Brad was dead? Did you see yourself in the denial stage?
There is no question about it there was a lot of disbelief and you wake up in the mornings and think it didn’t happen and wishing it didn’t happen and praying it didn’t happen but yes I can see that phase in all of our children. Carol, Fran, Johnny and Chris. Of course they were affected in different degrees but depending on what their age was at the time.
As far as the second stage being rage and anger according to Elizabeth Kubler Ross, did you feel the rage and anger after a while about Brad being dead?
You know I can say with deep conviction that I don’t ever remember seeing Foskey in rage or anger. I don’t think I experienced rage or anger. As a matter of fact Foskey sent the driver of the other car of the family a sympathy card just to let them know we were thinking of them too. I don’t remember that stage.
The driver of the other car and correct me if I’m wrong was this involving alcohol and was a head on collision?
What happened was out on Riverside Drive, Brad and Diane in the car returning from a picnic with their teammates and friends and cheerleaders and Diane was a cheerleader by the way and they pulled up at a stop sign maybe had stopped or were slowing down from the other direction this car estimated going 80 miles an hour went airborne and just like a missile came down and hit the car and mercifully I understand we were told they were killed instantly. Two lives snuffed out just that quickly.
Bargaining one of the things we are told about the stages of death that we go through is bargaining with God. Please don’t let this be-take this back, I’ll do anything God if you just make this not so. Did that happen with you?
There again we were blessed, I know Foskey had a spiritual background. This is resolution. There is not enough money in the world to measure how valuable is my mother’s faith. I’ve already mentioned in a previous show, my dad died when I was 8. My mother went to work and she taught me these words of persistence, dependability, and responsibility. Any valuable trait that I got, I got from her. She walked to work back and forth to save bus fare so I could play and she was busy so busy working, working for me, let me know she loved me that she didn’t go to church but I saw her reading her Bible every day of her life and she would quote me scriptures. At that time when I was a little boy, I didn’t know they were scriptures. Everything happens for the best which I didn’t understand, Knock and the door will open, seek and you will find. All these things are valuable to any person in time of misfortune. Of course another thing we were blessed with a great church there at Mabel White, Jimmy Waters. We will always be indebted to his guidance and counsel. I had some dear friends who came through. At that particular time on the coaching staff Mack Edwards, Dave Hill, I’ve already mentioned Jesse Duckworth, Tommy Mixon, who now scouts with the Dodgers, Eddie Battle and I could go on and on on on but there are a lot of resources that we have that we have to call on but in the final analysis we have to do something ourselves.
You mentioned earlier at the office when we were taking about this that you went through a period of time of depression and you could almost remember the day when you saw certain things happen and you saw the sunlight but the depression sort of stayed with you a while.
Oh, that is so real, I mentioned to you this morning in your office that during a 4 year period, I must have joined a record number of organizations in Macon. The Macon Coliseum Building Authority, hospitals, Big Brothers, Boy Scouts, YMCA you name it I got involved with it just to stay busy just so I could come home at night and be fatigued enough to go to sleep and I didn’t mention this. I’d go around to each one of the bedrooms Chris, Fran, Johnny, and Carol especially Chris who was 4 years old and it would be very desirable if we had that child like faith that she has now at 33 but I’d go in and she would say a prayer. She put her hands around my neck. I can still feel her little arms and without hesitation and through complete faith she would say God bless Diane and Brad up in heaven. She believed then and she believes it now but there are all sorts of forms of depression. I guess somebody somewhere we should have got counseling from you at that time but we didn’t but somebody said stay busy and that’s good advice because its good to stay busy.
Somebody said get physically involved and I played a lot of handball. At that partiacular time, I would go out of my way to play tons and tons of handball with great athletes. I mentioned Hubert Howell and by the way before I leave I'll call one of them or both of them and challenge them to play a game of handball. But there's is no way to measure what it did during that era of fierce physical competition. It without question helps.
There was a certain day that you remember vividly the sun came thru in your station wagon out at Westgate. That was your time of acceptance I suppose of the stages the final stages where we accept that somebody is really gone.
Yeah, I'm glad I got off track just a little bit but I'm back. It was 4 years later. It was in the spring probably the spring of 1968 or 69. Somewhere in there. I had my baseball uniform on. If I did one thing right as far as my family was concerned, we had a little family devotion every morning at 6:30. Johnny didn't particularly like it because he didn't like to get up that early. Another thing wherever I went they would go with me and they wanted to go and I am glad of that. They thought they were fornate that daddy had a key to the gym and all their buddies could go to the gym, but I was parked at the Westgate Mall. I had my baseball uniform on and Willingham had a game down at the park, Luther Williams Park. All my children in the car and for some reason I can feel sun shining in my face right now and maybe that was the day I remember that very vividly. The sun how warm it was and how great it felt-and I always enjoyed putting that baseball uniform on whether it was as a coach or player.
Was there any particular member of your family that seemed to have had a harder time with Brad's death?
Alright Chris was no big affect. Johnny was 8...don't think so-Carol no-but Fran was 12 years old and most impressionable of all the children. She's 41 years olds now and talking with the other children and through the years in talking to Fran, she actually had night mares and she was more affected than all the others of the family and she has actually got counseling for this. She lives in Wilmington, North Carolina and her husband is a high school administrator there.
Billy, I know that were going to break, but we will talk some more...we will be right back..
When we left a moment ago we were talking in connection with one member of the family that was having it rougher than the others and still has through the years, which Billy mentioned as Fran, his daughter who is 41.
One of the things that we wanted to talk about was how people responded. People do respond in different ways. I think we mentioned earlier while we were on break that death is taboo....we can talk about anything in the world but people really clam up when we talk about death or somebody just dying. And that makes it more difficult for those that are expressing losses--because they have a real need to talk with people and be heard in connection with someone who has just died. Did you find that to be true when Brad died?
No question about it. My experiences have told me that you can be with the closest of friends, people in your church and they are hesitant to mention any subject close to it. Anyone who has experienced the loss of a child or a loved one or for that matter enjoyes talking about this person. I thoroughly enjoyed discussing Brad. When he was 10 years old, we sat on the steps in Columbia, South Carolina and could talk on any subject. We played golf together. This is one of the things especially after his death that I learned is that when someone suffers a loss or any loss, you don't have to say a word to the person, just go in your presence and tell that person you do care and your are concerned. I remember after Brad was killed I've already mentioned some of their names. There were those that would come and be near. Tommy Mixon was one of them. Jesse Duckworth, Johnny Stallings, and the others. Eddie Battle, Wayne Beville. But just the fact that someone was there and cares. As years go by it's been several years, many years...you enjoy talking about it.
Do you remember when people would say or said the wrong thing?
Oh, there is no doubt - and I have to share this and I'm sure anybody that has lost a child - to hear somebody say it's God's will. God has will for our lives but he doesn't will us to get killed in an automobile accident - and that's a deep subject within itself and I'll just leave it there. And also another statement, well you've got other children. That's true but that one person was very special and nothing could replace that person but those are two things that thru the years we've discussed.
There were other people who were around that were very special to you.
Fred Johnson, the principal at Willingham when I was there. You might say he was a stabelizing force for me because I've been known to have energy and to jump here and there but Fred Johnson was an x-commander in the Navy. He was very calm under turbulent water and liked I've mentioned earlier an atom bomb could explode behind him and he may or may not blink. He's not going to get in a hurry about it and not going to make any rash decisions. A great leader and I appreciate him very much.
Billy after the death and you probably have the dates, I don't have the dates,. of course, a new football stadium was built here and it was named after your son. How did that make you feel and how did it make you feel the first time you went on that field with your players to play a game?
Yeah, you know Clark Central played Southwest of Macon in some games and when we go on that field, yes it is a special feeling and when I hear someone say Brad Henderson Memorial Stadium, it's very special.
What are some of thememories of Brad that are very special that you don't mind discussing?
Oh, there are a lots of them and I'll maybe share one or two. Baseball was one of his passions too. He was 11 years old and the Macon Little League was playing at Buckhead for the State Championship of Georgia. Macon was behind by one run and the bases were loaded. There were 2 outs and Brad was at bat and he got two strikes on him and the count went 3 and 2, full count. The next pitch, swoosh down the middle and he swung and missed and struck out to end the ball game and he collapsed. Brad collapsed on home plate and I mean he was having convulsions. You would have thought and a psychiatrist and these psychologists who say that competition is not good for children, would have had a field day watching him. But they didn't see him 15 minutes later in the car driking his pepsi cola and eating a hamburger, getting ready for football season. Competition is great. Of course there were other moments but that was very special.
What are some of the things that you feel like in looking back over Brad's death today that helped you the most in handling his death?
Well, there's not question about that and we've discussed that in your office. My mother's faith and what she taught me from the time I was a little guy that things do happen for the best but didn't add that it depends on our attitude and how we deal with what is dealth to us. There is no question about it, we as human beings grow mentally and were not going to grow mentally unless we read and study. We can grow physically and we're not going to get great endurance and strength and good physical stamina without running or some form of exercise and going beyond your limits. But by the same token we grow spiritually by going to church, Sunday School and all that and all the support groups that go hand and hand with it. And you can't measure friendship and people who really care. So all of that and that's all I can do is speak from personal experience. Jimmy Waters, the church, Beach Haven and all those things played a role in the comfort of our entire family.
One of the things I know that impressed me when I approached you two or three months back about doing this program, one of the first things you said was could we talk about the death of my son.
Aubrey, I certainly was very open to that and even suggested that we have a special program for that which we ahve done today.
For the person that might be watching the program today and that has recently lost a child and been through something like you've been through, what would you have to say to them today?
Well, I have been in that position in Athens during the past 21 years. It doesn't seem like 21 years have passed since we left Macon to go back to Athens but number one is to stay busy, not necessarily in this order. If you feel like crying-cry. If you feel like hollowering- hollow. If you feel like you want to get angry and hit walls-hit walls. I remember when they removed my mother from her little apartment on English Avenue, I stayed in there for an hour just hitting walls and crying and shouting because I knew the kind of life she lived. But stay busy, talk to other people who have experienced the same situation and somebody said it more wisely than I that this too shall pass. As for as the feeling, it will never go away. Don't ever think it will go away but it will certainly get better.
You know at times in our society men are taught not to cry. Well, its been handed down for a long time . We're supposed to be macho and tough and not let go and shed tears. What would you say about that?
I think we were teaching youngsters wrong and I'm sure that somewhere back early in my life, I had heard that someone told me the same thing but when I crossed the Stribling Bridge over the Ocmulgee River this morning I cried a little bit and I'll be talking to some of my players now and through the years tell them I'm about to cry and I say I don't apolize for it. I can hear the Impossible Dream being played or sung and I'll cry. I can see the flag being raised and I can cry with every emotion and I think it is good mental health to show your emotions. Whether it's tears or anger or whatever it might be.
I know this has been a painful voyage for you to come back and talk about this today. Why were you so willing to atlk about his because you even said Aubrey can we talk about Brad?
Well, you know we discussed that earlier and I think this is one of the fallacies of people who have loss loved ones especially children. You love
that subject and it is good to discuss it. That's one of my favorite subjects in life is Brad. I appreciate to opportunity to come back to Macon, where we got our start and there is no way I could every repay some of these palces like the Boy's Club, Lanier, Mt. DeSales and other places. It's been a part of our lives. A very positive part of our lives.
Earlier when we were talking about so much information, have you seriously considered writing a book. You certainly have all kinds of material. You could write a book on Brad's death alone.
Well, we've got a lot of notes on yellow pads. I've got boo koos of files way back from Willingham days and that would be one of the priviledges. Of course people ask me about retiring all the time. Little ladies in the pool up at Athens YMCA. Right now I feel great. I look forward to where I'm going every morning. When the time comes where I don't feel good, when it's not fun anymore and when the times comes and I don't feel like it and I think I'll be the first to know I'm not effective with the young people, I could consider retiring an at that time what I'll do maybe is to come back to Macon in some capacity.
Billy in closing and ending the program today, back to the grief and all that your family has experienced in the loss of your son, are there any comments you would like to make in closing that you feel like might help somebody else that has just went through what you went through?
Yes, stay busy, show your emotions, try to think of other people as when I think of myself period is when I get in trouble. Think of other people and give of yourself. No question about it because those things will help and even doing those things will be painful. You've got to accept the fact it's going to be painful. Other people have gotten through it and you can too and it things really get bad, get in counseling somewhere. No question about it you have to go on again being the head of the household and that responsibility. I don't know why somebody didn't suggest of course they knew we were involved in a church but no quesiton about it professional help will be advised.
Thank you very much for being on the program.
Thanks, I enjoyed it.
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