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18 SOUTHERN SENIOR MAGAZINE | Fall 2020 Fred went on to have a stel- lar career for the Wildcats as a running back and was named the Most Out- standing Ath- lete his sophomore year. His biggest ac- complishment didn’t happen on the grid- iron. His num- ber one accomplishment would always be finding the love of his life. “I was in the dormitory one day and was looking out the win- dow at the campus of Pearl River Junior College, and I saw this girl coming down the street from the highway pushing a baby in a buggy. I looked at her, and I knew she was too young to have a child. I asked one of my buddies there who she was and from that point on, I was going to make sure we got together,” Fred said a glow on his face. The beautiful girl was Velma Yvonne Daniels of Poplarville. Known for his quickness on the football field, Henley moved just as fast to secure a date with this beautiful girl he had seen through the window. “I made up my mind what I was going to do. I was shocked when I first saw her,” Fred explained. Fred made it a point to find her and did so when she was coming out of the cafeteria. He introduced himself and asked her out on a date. One week to the day he had first laid eyes on her, she agreed to go with him to see Ole Miss play at Tulane in football. Ms. Daniels was familiar with football; her brother Doug was head coach at Poplarville High School for many years. Henley went to her house, just north of the campus of the college, and met her mother, who Fred said was a wonderful lady. Fred and Vel Von (as she was affectionately known to everyone who knew her) were married on June 4, 1948, ap- proximately nine months after they had met. After he graduated from Pearl River, he would return to Mis- sissippi Southern to get his degree in 1950 and was looking for a job when was offered an opportunity to reunite with one of his mentors. Henley got a call from the man he says knew more football than anyone he had ever been around. While Henley was finishing up his studies in Hattiesburg, Dobie Holden had become the head coach at Pearl River in 1948, the year after Henley graduated. Fred returned to his alma mater and coached with Holden for two years. Henley said of that time, “He taught me everything I know about football and coaching. He was outstanding. I remem- ber that two or three times a week, he would come by and pick me up in his car and we’d go for drives talking about football the whole time. He would draw stuff on the inside of the windshield and windows. He was simply amazing.” Fred was developing his own way of who he wanted to be as he was learning how to coach football. “Some coaches get out there on the field and get mad, scream and holler, and they cuss and all that sort of thing. The players sometimes kind of stand-off from those coaches. I was never involved in that. When I was out on the field, it was strictly football. When I later became a superintendent, it was strictly school. I always felt coaches and teachers are going to give you something you are going to use the rest of your life. Pay attention to it, be honest, and get the job done.” Henley recalls attending a reunion many years ago at Brook- lyn (FCAHS), and this hit home with him. “I had two former players in the same family who came up to me and told me ‘Coach, we want you to know this. We never told you, but we want you to know that you did more for us than our parents’. Now, there’s a case of what I mean when I say as a coach or teacher, you make a difference in lives. I honestly had no idea what I may have said or what I did for them, but it just goes to show you that they are lis- tening to you when you are a coach, a teacher, or an admin- istrator,” Henley stated.