By Harry Minium
NORFOLK, Va. – Jason Henderson was raised in Dingmans Ferry, Pennsylvania, a small town an hour east of Scranton that could have been the backdrop for a Bruce Springsteen video.
Like most of the rest of the town's 7,477 residents, his family is blue collar. His father works heavy machinery in a stone quarry. His mother takes care of the elderly.
He didn't have a lot of money growing up, but Jason had plenty of love, and parents who were admirable role models.
His dad, Bill Henderson, works a ton of overtime to help the family make ends meet. He said he wasn't home enough for his kids, but they always had food to eat and clothes to wear.
Melissa Henderson, Jason's mom, is one of those people who does for others before taking care of herself. Over the years, she has worked with emotionally disturbed teenagers and developmentally disabled adults before taking on working with the elderly.
She has given clothes, furniture and money away to families hit with hard times during the pandemic. Anytime a family member needs anything, she's there to deliver.
"She has such a big heart," Jason said.
In a sense, Jason is an amalgam of the best of his parents. Like his dad, he works hard, especially on the football field, where the sophomore from Old Dominion has emerged as a defensive force this season.
He heads into Saturday's game at the University of Virginia (2 p.m., ACC Network) with 32 tackles, good for third among all 131 Football Bowl Subdivision schools.
With a body built like a Greek god, the 6-foot-1, 225-pound linebacker is an aggressive player whose motor always runs in high gear. He's a fierce tackler who, in spite of his diminutive size, delivers punishing tackles.
Yet he also inherited some of his mom's soft side. In last week's loss at East Carolina, he spent a good bit of the game chasing ECU quarterback Holton Ahlers around Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium.
Yet once, when he pounded Ahlers into the turf, he didn't stand over him and gloat, like so many players seem to do these days. Instead, he offered Ahlers his hand and helped him back on his feet.
"That warms my heart every time I see him do that," said Melissa Henderson. "It's so sweet."
Sweet may not be a moniker that describes a lot of linebackers, especially good ones, but it sticks with Jason Henderson. The most difficult part of leaving Pennsylvania, he said, was leaving his parents.
He wanted to get far enough away from Dingmans Ferry so that it wouldn't be so easy to get home. "I knew if I was too close to home, I'd be going home to see them too much," he said.
Henderson wears a St. Christopher's medallion around his shoulder given to him by his mother. The family is Catholic, and St. Christopher is the patron saint of travelers.
It is engraved with the words: "Son, may you always be safe down every road you travel."
He wears wrist bands his mother gave him with bible verses and quotations reminding him that no matter how successful he is, to be humble. Just before he departed for ODU, She bought him a bible, which she said he often reads.
"Me and my mom have always been close," Jason said. "We've always been each other's 'why.'
"She's definitely my why.
"I've seen her struggle with a lot of things. She takes care of a lot of people, at work and in our family.
"I see her struggle. But I see how happy she is when she helps people. It makes me want to follow in her footsteps. She's my hero."
When I read those quotes to his mother, she began to cry.
"To know he sees what I've done and that it made an impact on him," she said, as her voice trailed off.
Jason was encouraged to become an athlete from an early age, not that he needed much prodding. His grandfather, William Henderson, was a star wrestler and coach who is enshrined in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. His dad was a district wrestling champion.
Jason began wrestling as a youngster and finished fifth in the Pennsylvania state tournament as a junior at 195 pounds, one of the top wrestling states in the country.
But it was on the football field where he excelled. Playing for Delaware Valley High School, he was a two-way starter, at linebacker and fullback.
The Scranton Times newspaper twice named him the regional Defensive Player of the Year and was an all-state pick as a senior across all classifications. He was rated one of the nation's Top 60 outside linebackers by the 247Sports Recruiting Service.
Like any red-blooded Pennsylvanian, he was a true-blue Penn State fan and was delighted when Nittany Lion offensive coordinator Ricky Rahne began to recruit him.
Delaware Valley coach Keith Olsommer was a Penn State grad who always updated Rahne on the best players in rural northeastern Pennsylvania.
"I would go up there and he would always tell me about guys I should be aware of at other schools,'' Rahne said. "Then one time he told me, 'I've got one you should look at.'"
He met Jason when he was a sophomore.
"Every year I went up there to check up on him, he just got better and better," Rahne said. "Then he came to camp at Penn State and did really well."
Just prior to his senior year, Rahne left to become ODU's head coach, and the contact from Penn State coaches lessened.
"He didn't fit their needs they had at the time," said Rahne, ODU's Thurmond Family Head Coach.
But he surely fit the needs at ODU. Jason was the first player Rahne offered a scholarship at ODU.
Henderson eventually received offers from more than a dozen schools, including Army, Syracuse, Temple, Florida Atlantic and James Madison. But family is important to him, and ODU's coaches and players felt like a family, he said.
"I had a good relationship with coach Rahne," Jason said. "I got very close to him.
"I'd been down to Virginia Beach for a few wrestling tournaments. I knew the coaches here and loved them.
"I felt like I was back home in a way."
Defensive coordinator Blake Seiler said a lot of big-name schools passed on Jason because he was a wrestler.
"He was a stud wrestler and was cutting weight, so he got overlooked a bit because of his size," Seiler said.
Seiler wrestled in both high school and college. "I know as soon as they're done wrestling, they dedicate their lives to football and really blow up," he said.
"And that's what happened to Jason.
"He's got so much mental toughness and speed."
Rahne said "We're lucky to have Jason."
"He's a great player for us and he does great things as a leader on the field. And you never have to worry about him off the field.
"He's a Dean's List student. It's exciting to be able to coach him."
When I first saw Jason 14 months ago at a charity event where football players were helping disabled kids, I assumed he was a junior college transfer. He already looked like he'd spent two years with college athletic strength coaches.
His neck looked like a tree trunk and he carried himself with so much composure. More than a year later, he's just 19 years old.
When fall practice began a year ago, the question of whether he would redshirt or play right away never came up. He impressed from his first day on the field.
He was tied for third on the team in tackling last season with 80 and had 13 tackles in ODU's Myrtle Beach Bowl game against Tulsa.
Jason was on the Conference USA all-freshman team and named a true freshman All-American by PFF College Football website.
"He showed up last July and did what he did as a true freshman," Seiler said. "He hasn't been on our campus much more than a year and he's progressed so far."
Now, even though he's still a teenager, he's become a leader for ODU's defense. He calls defensive signals sent in from the sidelines and has begun to become vocal with his teammates.
His parents expected no less.
"Jason just loves football," Bill Henderson said. "When he watches a game, he tells me more things that I ever thought of. He watches every move a player makes.
"He's so aggressive and works so hard.
"I'm so proud of him. He's accomplished way more than I could have imagined."
Just before leaving for his first season at ODU in 2021, he had a tattoo of a lion inked onto his left upper arm. Yes, Big Blue is ODU's mascot, and that was a part of his thinking. But primiarly, he got the tattoo because lions are fierce and fearless.
The lion has a crucifixion cross on the left side of its face.
This past summer, he added a myriad of tattoos to his forearm, most related to his family. He will complete the tattoo when he returns home by adding an owl, which is symbolic, to the family, of his late grandmother, Doris Ryan.
"She was such an important person in his life," Melissa said.
The family, including his older sister Kaycie, was in S.B. Ballard Stadium two weeks ago when the Monarchs knocked off Virginia Tech, 20-17.
They can't make it to every game, but when they're not there, Melissa said her son always calls him from the field an hour or so before the game just to connect.
Melissa says she wishes she could come to Norfolk more often, but said she knows he's in good hands.
"There was something about coach Rahne that struck the right chord with us," she said. "You get gut feelings, instincts about certain people.
"When I looked at who I would trust most with my son, who would instill the morals that I would, I saw it in coach Rahne."
Jason said that everything Rahne promised, he has delivered.
"Everyone is close here," Jason added. "During my recruiting, I heard that sometimes the head coach doesn't get to know all of his players. That's something coach Rahne is very good at doing.
"He talks to everyone. He doesn't leave anyone out. Even people who are not on the field, people like (Director of Player Personnel) Tristin Iannone, we're all close.
"We're all a family."
Minium: ODU LInebacker Jason Henderson Reflects All the Good Values Instilled by his Parents
