Rocket Shot: Jamie McHenry’s Legacy Continues

Jamie McHenry was young, intense and full of life with a shot that matched his energy and earned him the coolest nickname in the emerging Georgia lacrosse community in the aughts.

“Jamie had this wicked windup,” said Christine McHenry, Jamie’s mother. “He would tilt backwards and whip the ball, and most people would duck. He made goalies consider going to a different position because he had a solid shot. His coaches nicknamed him ‘Rocket Shot.’”

Time is a funny thing. Those days seem like yesterday and ages ago all at once. Twelve years ago, Jamie McHenry died when he was struck by a car during a spring break trip to Florida. He was 13.

“Next year, he'll be gone as long as he was here,” his mother said. “The constantly growing gap of time makes it difficult.”

The lacrosse community has kept the McHenry family going. Christine McHenry wrote about her family’s journey in the book "Grieve Like a Mother, Survive Like a Warrior." Released on Aug. 4, McHenry and 13 other Georgia-based mothers detail how they coped with grief together and in their own ways.

For McHenry, the Jamie McHenry Memorial Foundation, established shortly after he died to support youth sports in the area, has been a part of that healing process. Lacrosse was and still is a part of Jamie’s story, starting from the moment he picked up a stick and didn’t put it down (literally).

“Jamie was that kid,” McHenry said. “He was passionate about every sport he played. He tried all the sports: tee ball, football, soccer, tennis, but none of them grabbed hold of him like lacrosse.”

McHenry, a CPA, was speaking to a colleague, who suggested getting Jamie into lacrosse and gave her some of his grandkids’ old sticks.

“He slept with those sticks,” McHenry said.

These days, lacrosse is big in Roswell. But McHenry recalls lacrosse only beginning to emerge when Jamie was getting into it in 2004 and 2005.

“It was still on the cusp of everybody grabbing onto it,” she said.

Jamie joined several “Team Ones” in the area, including feeder teams for the high school program.

“He went to all the different high school players and asked to borrow their equipment,” McHenry said. “He showed up at practice on the first day in all of this oversized equipment. He was totally into lacrosse. He loved it.”

Jamie also loved his friends and adventure. At 13, his parents agreed he could go to Florida with a friend and his family. They began in Miami, went North to Universal Studios and stopped on Hutchinson Island to see some of his friend’s relatives.

McHenry was with her husband, Jim, and daughter, Emily, in North Carolina, having unexpectedly found time during the middle of the busy tax season for some R&R. The trio had spent the day outdoors playing frisbee and golf and were sitting in the rustic lodge when she got a call from Jamie’s friend’s father — and not the father of the boy Jamie went on vacation with.

“It said, ‘Christine, this is Charlie ... you need to call Bob immediately. There’s been an accident,’” McHenry recalled.

Bob was the father. Suddenly, the poor phone reception that had made the mountainside lodge an ideal place to disconnect became a mountainous obstacle.

“We were trying to call Bob, but we couldn’t get a signal, so we went into this gigantic lobby and asked if we could use the landline,” McHenry said. “We called Bob, who had just gotten to the hospital, and the doctor had just pronounced Jamie dead. It was horrible. We’re at this serene lodge with people sitting around quietly by the fire, and we’re screaming and yelling.”

Time can trick you. Moments before, the McHenry family had been doing the same thing. One momentary phone call pushed the family into a different age, transforming them forever.

Grief is tricky. It varies from person to person and by the situation. But losing someone young was a feeling McHenry was all too familiar with. Her brother, Kevin, died on a family vacation when she was 6. Kevin was 8.

“I saw my parents go through it and knew there was no getting over it,” McHenry said. “It’s a lifetime sentence that stays with you. For my parents, that was 1973, and people didn’t talk about grief. You were supposed to just move on.”

For McHenry, grief involved vulnerability, openness and a touch of moving on without denying that she’d never actually move on. It sounds complicated because it is.

“There’s no protocol,” McHenry said. “For me, I felt adamant about honoring Jamie’s memory and not letting this tragedy overshadow the beautiful life he had, which is a lot easier said than done because you have to process the fact that he’s never going to be here anymore. That’s a tough, tough pill to swallow.”

While not here in person, the foundation, started less than a year after his death, allows Jamie to live on.

“We had all these young, 13-year-old boys — these friends of Jamie’s — were looking to us to show them that we didn’t want Jamie’s memory buried in time,” McHenry said.

McHenry looked to the Trautwein family, whose son, Will, had died by suicide. The family started the Will to Live Foundation to help prevent teenage suicide.

“They were a beacon of hope on how to start a foundation and honor Jamie’s memory like they did while still moving forward and having it become a positive thing, rather than focusing on such a tremendous tragedy,” McHenry said.

It began with an equipment drive to help kids interested in lacrosse who couldn’t afford the necessary gear. People came out to help, honoring Jamie and helping others. It didn’t stop there. Then, a friend and mother of one of Jamie’s friends and lacrosse teammates suggested a 5K to raise money to support local youth sports in his honor.

The concept of organizing one was new to McHenry. The first year, the race capped registration at 500 participants because of the affected neighborhoods along the route. Seven hundred people showed up anyway.

“It just makes you feel so good — everybody's there, remembering Jamie,” McHenry said. “Jamie had his lacrosse brothers, whom he loved and adored, and those families rallied around us. That’s what helped me.”

The Rocket Shot 5K continues today. The foundation also supports Team 8, a club team named for the uniform number Jamie once wore — a number no player on the team takes. Youth players from 14 schools in Georgia, Florida and Tennessee participate in numerous tournaments locally and out of state.

“It’s been a great program, and it’s allowed us to meet so many families,” McHenry said. “It’s been cathartic for our family.”

Also cathartic? Taking part in writing her part of a new book about grief, co-authored with 13 other bereaved mothers. “The Warrior Moms,” they call themselves. They met in a support group in North Atlanta.

“We realized, ‘We can help other people,’” McHenry said. “This has become my life ministry to help other bereaved parents — not that I ever wanted to, because the price I had to pay was excruciating. Nobody gets it like we do. I’m sorry, but even [psychiatrists], unless you’ve lost a child, you will never understand what it’s like to go through this. That was my mission and is the mission of many other women.”

If Jamie were here, what would he make of all of this? Kids can become famously bashful about their parents, especially during the tween and teen years, as they naturally start to pull away and assert their independence. Christine thinks her son would give her the ‘W’ on this one, though.

“I can totally see him being like, ‘That's so cool. That team is for me,’” she said, deepening her voice as she attempted the best impersonation of her son. It’s a goofy moment amid an emotionally charged conversation. Time is one of the funniest things of all, though.

“It's weird, you know, because, of course, he'll always be 13, right?” McHenry said.

And there’s no getting around the tragedy of that – or the good that managed to come of it because of a grieving mother’s resilience and lacrosse community’s rally cry.

“It sucks to be in these shoes, but I know we’re making him proud,” McHenry said. “I learned from my own brother’s death that you have to live your life the best you can, regardless of this tremendous weight you carry.”

Because time is funny, tricky and all we have. It’s the essence of the foundation’s rally cry to “Live for Jamie.”

“Live for Jamie means to live unbounded and to the fullest,” McHenry said. “And keep Jamie close to your heart. I hope the interest in his story never dies because that is what keeps us going. Whether it’s Team 8, the Rocket Shot 5K or the scholarships we give out, I want those to continue. As long as we’re alive, he’ll stay alive.”