Billy Henderson's impact stretched beyond football field

Billy Henderson won 222 football games at Clarke Central.

But his biggest victory might have been winning over Athens.

Henderson, who died Wednesday at 89, was a two-sport athlete at the University of Georgia and spent time as an assistant coach at Athens High School. He returned to town as Clarke Central’s head football coach before the 1973 season, in the midst of integration.

“He came along at the right place at the right time and did the right things,” said Dr. Walter Allen Sr., who was an assistant principal at Clarke Central and part of the group that hired Henderson.

Henderson was a standout athlete in Macon and dubbed the “Macon Meteor” by Dan Magill when he arrived at the University of Georgia to play football and baseball, where he played on the 1946 and 1948 SEC Championship teams in football and was a three-time MVP in baseball.

He coached at Jefferson, Athens High, Willingham and Mount de Sales, as well as stops at Furman University and the University of South Carolina, before returning to Athens.

He walked into a tense and troubled atmosphere in Athens. In Henderson’s biography ‘It Can Be Done’ by Ed Grisamore, Henderson said he was advised not to take the job and that he received sympathy cards in the mail.

“He brought a community that was divided together through his love of human beings, regardless of political affiliations, color, wealth,” Henderson’s son, Johnny, said Friday. “Rich, poor, black, white, he treated everyone like he wanted to be treated.”

Athens High and Burney-Harris merged to form Clarke Central in 1970. After the 1972 season, just 19 players remained on the football team, per ‘It Can Be Done.’

Five years later, Clarke Central won its first state title with a win over Valdosta in 1977. The program also won state titles in 1979 and 1985. His teams made the playoffs for 18 consecutive seasons, and his teams were state runners-up four times. He also won three state titles in baseball and one in swimming.

“He took something like football and brought people together,” Allen said.

Clarke Central’s football stadium is now named for Henderson, and the stadium scoreboard has stayed lit with a picture of Henderson through the weekend in his honor.

“He made sure the championship mentality that came to fruition on the football team permeated throughout the entire athletic program and the school,” Clarke Central athletic director Jon Ward said.

Henderson and his late wife, Fosky, had five children: Brad, who was killed in a car accident in 1964, Fran, Carol, Johnny and Chris.

“The biggest thing he gave his family was his love and time,” Johnny Henderson said. “Even though we shared him with everybody else, he still had all the time in the world for his children.”

And Henderson, raised by a single mother after his father died when Henderson was 8 years old, served as a father figure to countless athletes and students in the area through his roles as a coach and physical education teacher.

Tracey Woods, who played for Henderson at Clarke Central from 1984-1987 and went on to play for Marshall, recalled Henderson helping him out whenever he needed it.

He returned the favor when Henderson would work out at the local YMCA later in life. Woods always made sure he was the one to push Henderson’s wheelchair out to the car.

“There’s not any other man I know who had an impact on my life like Coach Henderson,” Woods said.

Henderson retired from Clarke Central before the 1996 season, ending a coaching career that spanned 23 seasons at Clarke Central and decades throughout the state. In football, he had an overall record of 286-107-15.

But his work in the area continued. He founded the Athens Athletic Hall of Fame in 2000. And he continued to work with youth athletes in the area, including through free football clinics at the YMCA, where he regularly exercised.

“The Y added 10 more years to his life,”Johnny Henderson said. “I would call him a couple times a week and ask him, ‘Did you go to the Y?’ and he’d say, ‘Cat got a tail?’”

In May, Clarke Central unveiled its renovated athletic facilities, including a new locker room for the football program. The program is now led by one of Henderson’s former players, David Perno, who played on the 1985 team and was the head baseball coach at Georgia.

The school used the occasion to throw an early 89th birthday party for Henderson. They filled the facility with scrapbooks and photos from his time at the school and former athletes greeted Henderson while he ate lunch.

“He brought it together,” Perno said. “He changed the face of the school, the football program. He was definitely one of a kind.”

What: Celebration of Life

When: 2 p.m. Feb. 25

Where: The Classic Center Theatre

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to It Can Be Done Inc. through Athens First Bank & Trust, P.O. Box 1747, Athens Ga., 30603

Remembering Henderson