Chris Henry wasn’t perfect. But he was trying to be.
His first years in the NFL, as a Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver, were rough. He was in and out of trouble with the law and the league; he was suspended five times for violations of the NFL’s personal conduct policy.
Following his fifth suspension, in 2007, the Bengals released him. Better late than never, Henry decided to turn his life around. He so impressed the team with his resolve, it reinstated him for the 2008 season. In 2009 he seemed on his way to a rich and rewarding life, both on the field and off.
Then on Dec. 17, 2009, he got into an argument with his fiancée, fell from the back of a moving pickup truck near Charlotte, North Carolina, and died at a local hospital soon after.
That’s when Henry’s mother, Carolyn Glaspy, stepped in. She did not want to see her son’s new-found turnaround go to waste. She told the hospital’s family support coordinator that she wanted her son to be an organ donor, so that he could help save the lives of others.
In the ensuing hours, three men and one woman received organ transplants. One got a kidney, another a liver, one a pancreas and a kidney, one received two lungs. A year later, all are alive, and healthy.
This Thanksgiving the four recipients and their families gathered at Charlotte’s Carolinas Medical Center where Henry donated his organs, to share a meal and thanks with Glaspy.
When Glaspy entered the room, the others stood and applauded. Thomas Elliot, a retired Goodyear worker who had irreparably scarred his lungs through a lifetime of smoking, invited Glaspy to listen to his new lungs—Henry’s lungs—through a stethoscope.
“I think about Chris Henry every day,” he told her.
Glaspy was overcome. “People journey into one’s life for a reason,” she told Yahoo! Sports. “My family will never be the same, but it will also never be bigger.”
Carolyn Glaspy, surrounded by the recipients of her son’s organs. Photos by John W. Adkisson.
