Remembering Brad
Son of legendary high school football coach was killed 60 years ago this Labor Day weekend
Not a Labor Day weekend goes by that I don’t think of Brad Henderson.
He would be a grandfather now … maybe even a great-grandfather.
Brad died 60 years ago this weekend, three weeks after his 16th birthday.
He is buried on the slope of a hill at Macon Memorial Park, his final resting place in the shade of a tall pine tree.
His grandmother, Jewell Henderson, was buried two years earlier in the family cemetery plot. Brad’s mother, Fosky, who died in 2010, is there now, too, along with his father, legendary high school football coach Billy Henderson, who passed away in 2018. (Brad’s little brother, Johnny, a football star at Georgia in the 1970s, died in 2022 and is buried in South Pittsburg, Tenn.)
I never knew Brad, but I knew every member of his family. His father was like a father to me. I tell people I never played for Coach Henderson, but I always felt like I did. He was coaching me, right up until the end.
It was 20 years ago this week that I went with Coach Henderson to the cemetery to visit the graves of his mother and son.
His mother was his hero, the center of his universe. She was the proverbial unselfish mama who made countless sacrifices for her children.
Brad was his heart.
William Bradford Henderson Jr. was named after his famous father, a chip off the old block. He was born in 1948, a few weeks before his dad started his junior season with the University of Georgia football team.
Coach Henderson was playing semi-pro baseball in Wrightsville that summer. When he arrived for a game one night, he was summoned by a message from St. Mary's Hospital in Athens. He had better hurry home. He was about to become a father.
Like his dad, Brad was a gifted athlete. His father started teaching him to swing a bat and throw a baseball when he was 2. At age 3, he would hang out with his dad on the sidelines at Jefferson High football games. When his father joined the coaching staff at Athens High, he was introduced to one of his day’s players, a quarterback named Fran Tarkenton, who is now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
He led his Macon Little League all-star team to the state championship in 1960. When one of his coaches was trying to explain to the team that a runner at second base was considered to be in "scoring position,'' Brad raised his hand. "Coach,'' he said, "whenever I'm at the plate, I'm in scoring position.'' The kid wasn’t just bragging. That year he hit .564 and set a Little League state record with 17 home runs, including two grand slams.
As a junior, Brad was the starting quarterback for the Willingham High Rams, where his father was the head coach. On the opening night of the season – Friday, September 4, 1964, he set a school passing record with 173 yards and two touchdowns in a 21-0 victory over Warner Robins.
The opposing quarterback that night for Warner Robins was a man you might have heard of — Sonny Perdue. Perdue went on to become the first Republican to be elected governor of Georgia since Reconstruction in 1868.
The following Monday was Labor Day. The Willingham team watched the game film that morning, then Coach Henderson gave his players the rest of the day off.
Before Brad went with some friends on a picnic to High Falls State Park, he went by the coach’s office. Coach Henderson tossed him the keys to the family Ford Falcon station wagon. It would be the last time he would see his son alive.
Brad stopped by the house. Fosky was in the backyard, hanging the day’s wash on the clothesline. He kissed his mother on the cheek. As Brad was leaving, Fosky turned to her 12-year-old daughter, Carol, and said: “Doesn’t he look so handsome?”
On their way home to Macon, Brad and his girlfriend, Diane Driggars, were at a stop sign at Wesleyan Drive and Riverside. (Not far from where the Shoppes at River Crossing was later built.)
A speeding car, driven by a 62-year-old Macon man, slammed into them in a head-on collision. All three were killed.
Henderson became anxious when Brad did not show up to pick him up at 3 p.m., as he promised. He told his coaching staff, “Brad is never late.’’ They then received word two teenagers had been killed in an accident on Riverside Drive.
When Sheriff Ray Wilkes showed up at Henderson’s door, “he didn’t have to say a word,’’ the coach later said.
The funeral was on Wednesday. A limousine from the funeral home dropped off Coach Henderson at the Willingham practice field later that afternoon.
It was his way of letting his players and coaching staff know that life goes on, no matter how heavy the heart.
Parents who have lost a child will tell you there is no greater grief.
In 1965, a new municipal football stadium was built and dedicated on Anthony Road.
Brad Henderson Memorial Stadium.
No one associated with Willingham will forget that day or the days that followed. For Mike and me, it was a time always etched into our memories. Carolyn Garvin
You know how the mind does crazy things. My first thought while reading was I’ve got to make sure my parents read this. They told me about it long ago. Thanks for sharing.