Before leaving for Rio, Olympic track & field athlete Jeff Henderson made a promise to his mother — to win a gold medal.
Henderson’s mother Debra, who his now in the late stages of Alzheimer’s, was an avid supporter in all of his endeavors. “I remember going for a touchdown, I could hear her yelling. I was like ‘oh my gosh’,” he told KARK.
Since then, his mother has been bedridden for four years. When he was a teenager, Henderson got the news that his mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and the disease has taken a toll on her ever since. “It went from walking and talking, then not doing anything, falling all the time, being in bed, not being able to walk at all, then not talking at all. It’s like damn why is it going away that fast,” he said.
When he went home to tell the news to his mom and his father, Laverne, who takes care of his mother, she was not able to verbally respond, but her eyes told the story.
This promise was fulfilled and Henderson’s dream became a reality this week. He became the first American man to win an Olympic long jump since Dwight Philips in 2004.
He promised his mom he’d win gold. So he did.
Congrats @Jeffery_henders! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🏅🏅 pic.twitter.com/huFOiD7rcC
— KARK 4 News (@KARK4News) August 15, 2016
After the win, he told NBC that this was all for his mother. “The medal is just for her. She is the one who raised me when I was young. She got sick when I was 17, 18 years old. It was hard for me to do that, and leave her there. Everything I did was for her. It was for God, for her and my family.”
Henderson returned home to Arkansas on Wednesday and delivered the medal to his mother, just like he promised.
A photo posted by Jeffery Henderson (@jeffery_henderson) on
“I want to put the medal on your head but I don’t want to hurt you,” Henderson told his mother. While Henderson couldn’t put his feelings of the moment into words, his father told KARK, “It’s something we’ve been looking forward to and I really wanted to see his mother’s face,” he explained. “When she sees him, she just follows him.”
The thing is, Henderson isn’t done yet. The medal was only first on the list for him to give to his parents.
Next on my list is to give my dad what he wanted all along . A brand new house for him and my mom
— Jeffery Henderson (@Jeffery_henders) August 14, 2016
I know, we’re crying too. What a great story.
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