Jared Henry is second Coalfield football coach to die from COVID, joining brother Keith

Coalfield assistant football coach Jared Henry died Wednesday evening from complications due to COVID-19, his wife, Christina, said. He was 47.

Jared Henry is the brother of former Coalfield football coach Keith Henry, 54, who died on Dec. 5, also from complications due to COVID-19, Christina Henry said.

Keith Henry was posthumously named the Tennessee Titans High School Coach of the Year on Dec. 15. 

The brothers' mother has also died from COVID-19 complications, Christina Henry said.

Jared Henry had been in the ICU at the University of Kentucky's Albert B. Chandler Hospital since Dec. 16. He was transferred to the hospital after an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine was made available.

An ECMO machine is a life support machine that replaces the function of a person's lungs by pumping blood from a patient's body to an external artificial lung that adds oxygen and removes carbon dioxide. 

"(COVID-19) had just destroyed his lungs so badly that it was irreversible," Christina Henry said Thursday. "He could not sustain breathing on his own." 

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She had known Jared Henry since 1995. She was teaching at Oneida High School in an internship while getting her master's degree at the University of Tennessee. Jared Henry taught at the middle school, which is in the same building as the high school.

After she suffered a sprained ankle during her internship, he offered to go grocery shopping with her. 

"I couldn't do both my crutches and push my grocery cart at the same time," she said. "We just stared doing things together ever since." 

They married in 1997 and have two children: Leeah and Austin "AJ." Austin, a sophomore at Coalfield, played linebacker. Jared Henry coached him because he was Coalfield's defensive coordinator.

Henry, who had been at Coalfield since 2005, has always loved coaching. 

"When we had AJ he always said, 'If AJ shows any interest in football, I'm going to keep coaching,'" his wife said. "I'm so blessed that he got to coach him for two football seasons. Of course, I wish he could see him through his junior and senior year.

"That, of course, is not going to happen, but I've had a good feeling in my heart that I'm glad God allowed him to be in AJ's life and his football life for at least two years." 

Christina Henry remembered how her husband would sometimes text her or their children out of the blue. It would let her know he was thinking about them. She said he also cared about the players he coached in a similar way. 

"He showed that same unconditional love to his football players as well," she said. "He loved every single one of them, and they loved him in return. If there was ever any of them that needed anything, Jared was typically the one they called. He was just a great father figure to so many kids in this area."