Ross and Edwin: forever friends

  ...

Fr

    From their time in third grade together to lives in their early 70s, Ross Oglesby and Edwin Tubbs were best friends.

       Not inseparable -- because they had their own lives and families -- but darned near.

       They were my friends, too, because Sunset Acres (in southwest Shreveport) was that kind of neighborhood in the late 1950s and through the 1960s.  

     And -- heck, yes, I'm partial to them -- they were among the best people and the best athletes to come out of Sunset Acres. Especially together.

       It so happened that their third-grade year (fall 1957) began a couple of months after the Van Thyn family moved into the neighborhood.

       Over the next few years, those of us participating in schoolground touch football games and makeshift track meets on our streets learned this: Ross and Edwin were the fastest runners in our area.

       If you competed against them, you had no chance. Only Edwin could catch Ross; only Ross could catch Edwin. 

     When they were teammates -- as they soon would be at Oak Terrace Junior High and Woodlawn High School -- they were stars ... and winners.

        And they were great kids -- even-tempered, reliable, funny, not argumentative like some (guess who?), no trouble for teachers or parents.

       They would be that way, always. And always loyal to each other. 

       My opinion: Ross Oglesby was the best athlete ever to come out of Sunset Acres, high school All-State in two sports (football, track), a college football player. He was "Ross The Hoss."

       Edwin Tubbs was a terrific high school football player, a medal winner in Vietnam, one of the thousands of American unsung heroes in that woebegone war. 

       They would become husbands and fathers and grandfathers, working hard to support their families. It didn't always work out for them, and there were health and mental issues. They weren't especially book-smart, but they were smart, gentle and kind.

       It was a beautiful friendship.

       And I was proud to call them my friends forever, although the years and time separated us. 

      Because I was two years older, they were sort of like little brothers for me, and I was so proud that they were two of the biggest stars on the teams representing our schools. They were "my guys."

      Here is how close together we lived: First, both Ross and Edwin lived almost directly across from the Sunset Acres Elementary School grounds; all they had to do was walk across the street.

      On the blocks in the square around the
school:  Ross' family lived on West Canal (east side of the school); Edwin's family lived on Sunnybrook (north side); our close friends Johnny and Terry Tucker lived on Burke (west side, their backyard fence bordered the school); we lived on Amherst (south side). Ross' house was a half-block away from us. Visited there often.

       Lots of good times with those boys. Lots of laughs, lots of stories (a couple mildly x-rated). Lots of memories.

       We don't exactly have a happy ending here, except to say Ross and Edwin lived long, happy, productive lives. But ...

       Ross Oglesby, 74, died last Thursday after dealing with cancer -- and other ailments -- for several years. 

       Edwin doesn't know his best pal is gone. 

       For years, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after Vietnam made his life, and his family's life, hell at times. More recently, dementia set in. 

        He is now in a veterans' home in Bossier City, well-cared for, still -- as his wife Kathie and their three daughters will say -- the sweet guy they adore. 

       But the PTSD has kicked in stronger than ever, and hospitalization and changes in medicine have been required lately. 

       Edwin's travails were not a subject Ross, in his final year and dealing with illnesses, could discuss. 

       Edwin and Kathie spent 44 years living in Southern Hills, which in the 1960s was Woodlawn territory. They then moved to Haughton -- which is where Ross has lived for years. (Haughton, for those who might not know, is in rural Bossier Parish, and it's the home of Dallas Cowboys QB Dak Prescott).

     Ross, in a marriage and re-marriage, had two sons and a daughter and now four grandsons and six granddaughters. Edwin and Kathie have seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

        "They loved each other like brothers," Kathie Pollard Tubbs says of our guys. "Ross became one of our family; he spent a lot of time here with our grandkids. He'd come over 3-4 times a week, and he'd go to the refrigerator and grab some cake or a soft drink."

     And, of course, there was lots of discussion of old times, of Sunset Acres and Woodlawn ... and stories.

       There was this interplay: "Ross was the aggravator," Kathie said, "and Edwin loved to be aggravated. It was a game they played, and they need an audience." 

       It was a battle of teasing appreciated by a closely knit group of Woodlawn football players who were seniors on the 1966 team, a dozen-plus who have stayed in contact through the years. They were all familiar with the Ross-Edwin dynamic.

     Size-wise, they were different. Oglesby, as a high school senior, was a muscular 6-foot-2, 200 pounds. Tubbs was compact, listed on the 1966 All-City team at 5-7 (he actually was 5-9) and 170 pounds. His strides were nothing like Ross', but he too could move. 

---

      Many of the '66 football seniors also were together in junior high at Oak Terrace, where as eighth-graders in track-and-field in 1963 they won that school's first city championship of any kind. Tubbs and Oglesby were key runners on the relay teams. They were ninth-grade champs the next year, with Tubbs winning both sprints (100 and 220 yards, plus two relays) and Oglesby on all three relay units.  

      In junior high, Tubbs was the star running back; Oglesby was an end. 

     At Woodlawn, running back was a position deep in talent, so Tubbs -- speedy and aggressive -- became a perfect fit at linebacker in defensive coach Jerry Adams' gambling/blitzing scheme. He was part of a junior-filled unit that struggled early, then became tough enough to balance a QB Terry Bradshaw/WR Tommy Spinks-led offense.

     That team, after mid-season struggles, walloped Byrd 39-0, Woodlawn's first-ever victory over the arch-rivals in six tries. It didn't lose again -- with one close escape at Neville (a 9-7 victory on a final half-minute field goal) -- until the Class 3A state-championship game. Sulphur won 12-9 in a hard rain at State Fair Stadium.

     So the defense was especially seasoned for the 1966 season, and the linemen -- offense and defense -- were the biggest physically Woodlawn had had in its seven years. The result was the best Knights' team ever -- a 10-0 regular season and a defense which had six shutouts and gave up only four TDs.

    Plus, a punishing running game on offense, led by Oglesby, who -- after tries at end and tackle, found the position he loved.

     Powerfully, he could run through tacklers or, with his long strides and speed, beat them to the outside. Three other backs also could play. 

     Twice both Oglesby and Tubbs were the "players of the week" selected by The Shreveport Times.

     Ross, with 1,308 yards rushing (5.2 per carry) -- 528 more than anyone else in Shreveport-Bossier -- became Woodlawn's first first-team All-State running back (Tommy Linder had been a second-team choice in 1962). 

     Edwin, shooting gaps and chasing down opposing QBs and RBs, was the Shreveport-Bossier "Defensive Player of the Year," chosen by the Shreveport Touchdown Club. He was second-team All-State -- the highest honor ever then for a Woodlawn defensive player. 

     The only preseason question marks for the '66 team were quarterback and one cornerback.

      The QB spot was filled by a promising, poised sophomore -- Joe Ferguson. The cornerback spot was filled by a transfer from North Caddo, Ronnie Alexander.

    Ferguson was steady, but not the passer he would become. In the next two seasons, he was the best high school football player -- passer -- many of us have ever seen. Turned out he was the real deal; he went on to 19 years in the NFL.

      A dozen of the players on the 1966 team would play college football, some at major schools. Alexander, All-City at cornerback, became a small-college All-American linebacker at Louisiana Tech and then was one of North Louisiana's best-ever defensive coaches (college and high school).

      But the 1966 Knights were the best Woodlawn team not to win the state championship. After a playoff-opening victory, disaster came in a lengthy trip to Bogalusa (345 miles, 6 1/2 hours one way). The trip back was longer.

     Bogalusa would haunt us forever. Ross and Edwin -- all of us -- often talked about it, ruefully.

     The score was 18-14, the Lumberjacks scoring the game-winning TD with about 5 minutes remaining after a long drive against a proud Woodlawn defense that wasn't the same as it had been.

     One major reason: two injured leaders. Tubbs had injured a calf early that week in practice. He played, but he limped at about half-speed, unable to do what he had done all season. And Alexander, a ferocious hitter and cover corner, left the game in the first quarter with an injured leg.

    Another factor: Bogalusa's junior quarterback. Terry Davis cut up the Knights' defense with 258 passing yards and another 59 rushing as he turned corners that Tubbs and Alexander might have filled. Davis also was for real; a couple of years later he started at QB for Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant at Alabama. 

    (Ironic, because Edwin Tubbs for life was an Alabama fan.)

     Oglesby, though, had a productive game with 112 yards rushing on 22 carries. But Woodlawn that night could not quite control the ball -- or game -- as it had all year.

---

    Ross, in the spring of their senior year, was one of the state's outstanding hurdlers -- the Class 3A state champion in the 120 highs (14.1) and second in the 180 lows (18.9), close to the best times ever in Louisiana, and All-State in both events. He was bigger than most hurdlers, but speed and athletic ability is what it is.

      He signed to play football at Louisiana Tech, and stayed two years, but played sparingly, not used to a new coaching staff there which was louder, more aggressive than the highly regarded Woodlawn staff that had nurtured him. He transferred to play two good seasons at Southern (Ark.) State in Magnolia.

     He would go into coaching -- a couple of

times -- and worked several other jobs, including truck driving, so he got to see much of the country. 

      He also gained much weight, almost double the 200 from high school, to an unhealthy point that affected his breathing. Urged to lose weight, he did -- but still was around 250. A hernia bothered him for years; when finally he submitted to an operation, cancer was found in his intestines. 

     Two rounds of chemo followed, until he had had enough. He had hospice care the last couple of months. 

       His great friend never knew. 

       Edwin wasn't college material, so he joined the U.S. Army right out of Woodlawn, and was patrolling in Vietnam a few months later. He survived it, but paid a price.

     He came home to marry Kathie on June 2, 1969, and they lived out his Army days at Fort Polk, La. Back in Shreveport, he began his own construction company and, for years, worked projects in town and throughout the Southeast as they raised their family. 

     "He was our hero," says Kathie. "He had all these medals for his military service, but he never showed them off. He was so humble. He wouldn't talk about it." But the PTSD at times made life more difficult.

      Ross helped him deal, too. How close were they? Each was the best man in the other's wedding. 

      "They stuck together all those years," Kathie says. 

       It all began in our beloved Sunset Acres days.    

From Sunset Acres to a legend in New Mexico

     He lived for a while in our old neighborhood, Sunset Acres; a small kid, two years younger than us, but such a good athlete that we took notice.
     Whatever happened to Billy Henson?

Billy Henson: Retired as teacher, coach and administrator, now
living the good life as an outdoorsman in New Mexico and Louisiana.

     He was good in three sports -- football, basketball and baseball -- and he was on the Oak Terrace Junior High teams. But he never made it to our high school, Woodlawn. After eighth grade, he moved away ... to New Mexico.
     Let's catch up with Billy Don Henson because, well, some people consider him a legend.
     He became a two-way All-State football player in New Mexico (offense and defense), a scholarship player at University of New Mexico.
     But more significantly, the head football coach -- especially in a small town, Animas, N.M., in the southwest corner of the state, near the Mexico border -- with this kind of success:
     • a state-record seven consecutive state championships (1984-90) in Class AA (third-highest class in that state);
     • 69 consecutive victories (1985-90), at the time one of the nation's longest streaks;
     • a 145-32-2 record (.814) in 16 years (four schools) as a head coach;
     • subject of a 1989 Life magazine centerpiece story on his team, program and winning streak written by Gary Smith, later regarded as one of America's most talented sportswriters when he was a star at Sports Illustrated.
     • father/mentor of the most productive passing quarterbacks in state high school football history.
     • A football stadium named for him: in Animas ... Billy Henson Stadium.
     He's 69, retired since 2011 after 40 years of coaching, teaching and administration -- the last eight years as the school superintendent in Hatch Valley, N.M.
      Now an avid quail hunter and fisherman, he has two "new" knees (a double replacement a year ago), and for about six months each year, again a Louisiana resident, at  Toledo Bend.
      And to think, he once played quarterback on the same team with Terry Bradshaw (who was injured), and it is plausible that he might have delayed Joe Ferguson's emergence as the starting QB at Woodlawn. He had that kind of ability. 
     He was a could-have-been, would-have-been Woodlawn Knight, a potential star. Read on.
---
     His name came up last week at lunch with an old friend from Sunset Acres. And I at least had a clue.
     Because in the early 1990s, while working at the Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville), I saw a magazine article about the nation's longest high school football winning streaks, and a team near the top (69 wins in a row), I noticed, was coached by ... Billy Henson.
     Could it be?
     A phone call to Animas, N.M., confirmed it was our old Sunset Acres connection. We talked then, and now some 28 years later, made contact again on Facebook. And, yes, he remembered that phone call. 
     Thus the idea for this blog, and the research, and many exchanges for information, photos and clippings.
---
     The Sunset Acres Athletic Club got its start, as I recall, in about 1958. Its early teams were not all that successful -- not many "athletes" there in those distinctive bright gold uniforms with black trim.
     But Billy Henson stood out as the QB on 75- and 85-pound football teams, even more so as the point guard and top scorer in basketball, and a potentially good baseball player (third baseman).
     He lived, for a while, on the same street (Amherst) we did, but -- Sunset Acres kids know this division -- on the other (east) side of the canal, the 2700 block.
     We knew him and we were watching for him when he came to the junior high. 
     He was small, and when the coaches at Oak Terrace  passed out 33 football uniforms in the fall of 1961, he did not get one. But watching him in P.E., Coach Leonard Ponder saw ability and -- when someone dropped off the team, opening a spot -- Billy got his uniform.
      Instead of playing for Sunset Acres' 105-pound team, he was with the Oak Terrace Trojans for two years, coached by Ellace Bruce, Ponder and Tommy Powell.
     He was the starting QB on the 1962 eighth-grade team that dominated its only four opponents. He also got playing time (halfback or QB) on the ninth-grade team because Bradshaw -- for the second year in a row -- was sidelined with a broken collarbone, leaving the quarterbacking to either Tommy Spinks, Jimmy Buckner or Henson. 
     While the others went on to be leaders -- in football and other sports -- at Woodlawn, Henson went to New Mexico.
     His parents' divorce was the reason for that. His father, as Billy recalled never having made much money in various jobs in Shreveport, went west at the behest of his sister and brother-in-law and a more lucrative job in the NM mines.
     And in summer 1963, Billy's mother put her son on a trailways bus to join his father. The Oak Terrace Trojans (and Woodlawn Knights)' loss was the Carlsbad Cavemen's gain.
---
     Billy Henson as a QB at Woodlawn? Let's speculate.
     In what would have been his sophomore fall (1964), Trey Prather was the Knights' Class AAA All-State QB, with Bradshaw and Spinks as his backups.
     In 1965, Bradshaw with his tremendous right arm and potential, was the starter, but -- honestly -- the Woodlawn coaches were not sure of his steadiness. Henson, as a junior, could have been an option.
     In 1966, after Billy's growing spurt (listed in New Mexico newspaper stories as 6 feet, 188 pounds), he might have challenged Joe Ferguson for the Woodlawn starting QB spot.
     Ferguson was a thin, 160-pound sophomore, with football sense, a strong right arm and potential, but totally unproven in high school ball. On the most talented, physically largest of the seven Woodlawn teams to that point, QB was by far the biggest question mark.
     Henson could have been the answer, at least to open the season. And for a few weeks in the spring of 1966, he was actually attended Woodlawn.
     His grandmother, his father's mother, was still in Shreveport, but sickly and having a tough time after Billy's grandfather died. So Billy's father and Billy returned to town, helped sell her place and move her to New Mexico. 
     Meanwhile, Billy attended Woodlawn.
     "Coach [Lee] Hedges was kind enough to let me suit out for spring drills," he recalled. "It was before he left for Louisiana Tech and Coach [A.L.] Williams became head coach. I told them that I probably wouldn't be in school until the end of the school year, but they let me train with them anyway. 
     "It really helped me get to another level as an athlete in New Mexico as they didn't allow spring ball out here."
      And he remembers meeting Ferguson that spring: "He was so impressive even as a [freshman] player."
     So Ferguson stepped in with a veteran team, the foundation of which was the talented Oak Terrace players from that unbeaten 1962 team that Henson quarterbacked. 
     Joe fit in nicely; a powerful running game and superb defense keyed the first undefeated regular season in Woodlawn history, and only an injury-bad-luck week led to a playoff loss and spoiled state championship hopes.
      Even if Henson had not played QB, it is likely he would have fit somewhere in the loaded Woodlawn lineup; the likely spot -- my opinion -- cornerback.

All-State player, offense and defense,
at Carlsbad High in 1966

      At Carlsbad High, he joined one of New Mexico's top high school programs and "it was a different approach to football. They didn't throw the ball and if you punted, you were a coward."
      Because "I was more athletic and bigger than the kids out here," he was moved to running back and middle linebacker.
      And he was the team's best player. The result: All-State at running back, All-State as a middle linebacker (facts confirmed by newspaper clippings).
      On the first play of that season, he ran an end sweep 81 yards for a touchdown. He did the Cavemen's placekicking, too, and was chosen for the New Mexico high school all-star game.
      And he was recruited by, and signed a scholarship with, the New Mexico Lobos. He said Hedges, then at Tech, offered him "a full ride ... because he knew of me, but I thought it best to stay close to my family."
      An ankle injury, first reported as sprained but actually broken, kept him out of the all-star game and out of the UNM freshman team's four-game schedule (Division I freshmen were not eligible for varsity then). 
      A coaching change after that season, and what he recalls as a brutally tough spring practice under the new head coach, and two hurting knees helped him decide to end his playing career. 
      But graduation and a coaching career awaited.
      "I watched coaches, and I studied what they were doing, how they were teaching," he said. "What I learned most was what not to do."
---
     His coaching days began as a graduate assistant (1972-73) at Eastern New Mexico University. He had taken an interest in the growing emphasis then on strength programs and helped develop one at ENMU.
      His first regular teaching/coaching job was at Clayton, N.M., in the fall of 1974; he would return there two decades later. Then through a New Mexico high school coaching legend, he moved to Alice High deep in south Texas. As defensive ends coach there, he again helped build a strength program.
     The Alice team made the Texas top-class state semifinals his first year and, after another good season, his road back to New Mexico was one year as defensive coordinator at Roswell. 
     Then came his first head coaching job in Capitan, N.M., and by the second year his team played in a state- championship game and lost 6-0.
     The school superintendent who hired him in Capitan had moved to Animas. Thus, he hired him again for a job that looked like a huge challenge.
     Billy was familiar with Animas because it had been an opponent for Capitan.
     "Although we beat Animas solidly," he recalled, "I recognized that they had plenty of kids that underachieved."
     It turned out to be a magical place.
     It was a very rural setting -- a truly middle-of-nowhere place. For years, the school had drawn kids with farming and ranching backgrounds, many from even more rural closeby areas. Enrollment was only 50-to-60 students.
      Then, a new nearby copper-smelter plan led to a population growth, and a football program was started in 1976.
      The new coach in 1981 took the challenge and put together the right mix.
       "We never had a football tradition," Henson said near the end of his Animas reign in a story that labeled him "the architect, "but we had an environment because the kids were hungry to do something."
      Enrollment was up to 170 students, and Henson had a "no-cut" policy for his team, which usually numbered about 40. Still, the Panthers usually faced great odds.
       After a 1-6-1 record his first season, there was huge  improvement the next year -- an 11-1 record and the state semifinals. By 1984 came the first of the seven state titles.

As the head coach at Animas, N.M., he was the master builder -- and
sevens years in a row state championship coach.

       From an almost two-page Albuquerque Journal spread on the Animas program in August 1988: "Almost immediately after taking the job in 1981, Henson built a homemade fieldhouse out of a concession stand that adjoins the football field. First came a weight room, then an office, then a locker room (complete with artificial turf floor) and finally, showers."
       More from that story: "The new coach absolutely refused to pit new against old, native against newcomer. And eight years later, Animas' kids play as if they'd been together since birth."
       "We've got a mix," says wingback Derek Hill. "We've got cowboys and Hispanics, and a lot of people in between. But most of the kids on this football team, I don't think there are two guys who don't get along. We're so small we have to. We're all together, and that's the key."
     With enough of a passing game and a physical, disciplined style, the emerald green-uniformed Panthers began pounding opponents. 
     For example, in three-plus seasons (1985-early 1988), Animas outscored opponents 1,400-173. 
     Scheduling games, even against bigger New Mexico schools, became a challenge. Thus, one game in -- yes -- Honolulu; another against a team in Mexico. 
      Also a challenge: The routine long road trips.
      Henson, also the team bus driver, tells of away-game trips that ended with him pulling the bus into the school parking lot at 4 a.m. One playoff season, the final three games -- quarterfinals, semifinals and title game -- were bus trips of 800, 800 and 1,200 miles.
        "To this day I believe our kids overcame so much more," he said. "... The problem was that some of the kids still had an hour to get in their cars and drive to get home. I just prayed them made it home, but they were raised that way and they were so mentally tough compared to other kids then, and so much more than kids today.
     "... Gary Smith (in Life) wrote such flattering things, [but] he did not even begin to scratch the surface of what my players had to overcome.
    "But we did all of it together. I feel so satisfied to have been part of it. But I can vouch that those kids were raised hard and I was fortunate to show up at the right time."
     With all the success came such recognition: a tribute on CNN, a front page (1A) story in The Dallas Morning News, a feature in USA Today.
     And a contract for a movie in 1989, a visit by possible producers to Animas. That did not develop. Instead the feature subject became the powerful Odessa (Texas) Permian program and the book and movie Friday Night Lights.
     For all that, Henson says his starting coaching salary in Animas was $1,500 a year. His final coaching salary was $1,500 a year. Meanwhile, all four of the Henson children were born in that time.
      "I am not blaming the community," he said, "but they really had no tax base to do better."
---
      The tributes, and growing legend, kept coming. Notably in 1987 Animas renamed its football stadium for him.
      From the 1988 Albuquerque Journal feature: "Henson, a driven but sensitive man who resides in a yellow home 25 yards from the stadium, remains the magnet around which kids gather."
     From a 1992 Journal column: "Notable for his humble reserve, Henson's special gift as a coach, one trumpeted by his former players and ex-bosses alike, was his singular ability to make things work."
     From a 1990 Dallas Morning News story: "Henson is admired here for his even temper, his ability to coax the best out of the teenagers. He treats the boys with respect, people say, calling them 'men' and never criticizing them publicly."
      Said one of his players, an offensive guard, in a 2010 story: "Wow. It was amazing to be part of something like that."
      Gary Lunsford, who lives in Vanderwegen, N.M., is a longtime friend who coached with Billy (at Roswell) and against him, and as a college student and wide receiver, benefitted from Henson's practice passes one summer.
     "I don't believe I have ever seen a football team that bought into their game as good as Billy Henson's did," Lunsford said, recalling a one-sided coaching loss against Animas.
---
     The winning streak, from a loss in the last regular-season game in 1984, ended in the eighth game of the 1990 season -- so five "perfect" seasons in a row -- with a 9-8 loss at Animas' biggest district rival, Lordsburg. To that point, the Panthers had outscored opponents 286-28.
      Animas fell three games short of tying the then-national record for consecutive victories.
      But soon came the seventh consecutive state title ... and sweet revenge. The final opponent was -- karma -- Lordsburg. Animas won a rout, 36-0; Lordsburg had three first downs in the game.
      And then Henson's time in Animas was done. His final record there: 127-28-2 (.815). Without the first year: 126-22-1 (.849).
      Having once accepted another coaching job but changing his mind, he made it official after a change in administrators and limits put on his strength-training program. 
      He took over a program at Silver City that had lost 26 consecutive games, but in one year went from winless to a 6-4 record. Still, he felt the politics in town led to resentment -- and he moved on, and out of coaching. 
       Bill Coker was the Animas principal during Henson's glory years there and then, as a school superintendent, hired him as an elementary school principal at Tucumcari.
       The Albuquerque Journal story on his hiring for that job quoted Coker: "To relate to kids, you've got to be honest, and you've got to build their self-esteem. Billy commands that type of self-respect and esteem. Kids pick up on that and respond very positively.
     "He is just one of the best educators I've ever seen at creating a positive self-image."

Billy Henson: From coach to
 administrator to retirement

       Two years later (1994), it was back to coaching -- head coach at Clayton. In two seasons, his teams made the state quarterfinals and semifinals, and then he left coaching for good. 
     He became a school superintendent, the final eight years at Hatch, N.M.
      And it was there that another Henson became a big football name -- son Brett.
     "I took all those proven drills that my Oak Terrace coaches used to train me with," Billy said, "and passed them on to all my quarterbacks and my son."
     Brett, playing for Hatch Valley, led two state championship teams while setting all the individual passing records in New Mexico. His statistics -- 4,914 yards and 70 TDs in 2003; 4,604 yards and 64 TDs in 2004; 12,124 yards and 166 TDs in his three-year career -- make even Ferguson's 1966-68 numbers look small. Another eye-popper: nine TD passes in one game.
    Brett is listed among the all-time leading passers in the national high school record book.
    "So even though I never got the chance to play quarterback again," Billy said, "I guess I passed it all on to my players in Animas and to my son. And I am so thankful that I experienced it all and how it turned out."

---

      "I know it sounds like I moved around a lot in my career," he says, "but at least I can say the school people I knew hired me back for a second time and even offered me jobs for the third. I moved in my career for professional advancement ... 
     "Besides, my 'growing up life' prepared me for such a transit lifestyle," he said, laughing.
     That lifestyle changed with his retirement -- a family split and a move away from society.
    After 24 years of marriage and four children (three daughters and Brett), when their youngest child graduated, "my wife and I went our separate ways. But in a civil way; we all get together on holidays.
      "After living such a public life," he said, "I retreated to the Sacramento Mountains in southern New Mexico. I built my own cabin by myself, then went back to Louisiana and built a fishing camp at Toledo Bend. 

The Henson transport: New Mexico to
Louisiana, and back every six months.

     "I spend January to June in Louisiana, June until January in New Mexico. My kids come and share my camps with me."
      On the trips, he loads up his Dodge Ram truck with a camper, and pulls a trailer with a four-wheel drive vehicle, and his faithful dog companion.
      He loves quail hunting with friends and ex-players, and he is able to move much better now after the knee replacements.
      At Toledo Bend -- where his camp is near the popular Solan's Camp (at the end of state highway 482, mailing address Noble, but also close to Zwolle) -- he's been known to catch monster catfish (he has the pictures and a video to prove it).
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     "I lose sleep thinking it would have been me to inherit the job instead of Joe Ferguson to lead the Knights to a championship," Billy said. "I knew I had the ability, but then life happened.
     "I guess I was maybe the missing Knight, but they did great without me, for sure."
     The Knights did. So did Bradshaw and Ferguson -- both legendary players and individuals.
      That also applies to Billy Don Henson, the transplanted Sunset Acres kid in New Mexico.