A Big Hooray for "Hollywood"

Henderson's luck could be Super Bowl for lottery

Christian Davenport
Austin American Statesman
March 25, 2000

He squandered what fortune he had on drugs and booze and the good times he had off the football field that helped earn him the nickname "Hollywood" on it.  His fame took on a notorious bend after an ignominious departure from the National Football League, where he had been a star with the Dallas Cowboys.

Since then, years after just a few months separated life on top of professional football and a California prison cell, Thomas Henderson had rebuilt his life, recast his ambitions and slowly begun to follow another trajectory that has helped him emerge from a troubled former life.

And so on Thursday, when he realized he had won the $28 million Texas Lottery, Henderson, 46, could not help but feel as if it were somehow preordained, as if after years of drug addiction and a 28-month prison sentence, winning the lottery was supposed to happen in what he called his "blessed" existence.  "I think it's karma," he said.

As the news spread of the most famous person to win a lottery since U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, a wealthy Wisconsin Republican who won $250,000 in the Washington, D.C., lottery in 1997, Henderson spent his time Friday between media interviews, discussions with his lawyers and a trip to the bank, where he put his winning ticket in a safe-deposit box.

It will stay there until he decides how to spend his money.  (He must decide if he is going to set up any trusts or corporations before he cashes in his ticket.)  Then the lottery will check to see if it is indeed the winning ticket.

"Assuming the ticket Mr. Henderson purchased does pass our validation process, I would say it was a Super Bowl event for the Texas Lottery," said Lottery Director Linda Cloud.

Texas Lottery spokesman Keith Elkins said Wednesday's Lotto winner is entitled to $14,491,235, the cash value equivalent of the $28 million prize that would have been paid out over 25 years.  The lottery subtracts 28 percent for income tax, leaving a check of $10,433,690.

While he said the money won't change him -- "I like who I've become," he said.  "I'm going to stay in Austin; this is my hometown." -- it is certainly the latest twist in a life marked by polar extremes.  Henderson has swung between celebrity and notoriety, riches and destitution, addiction and rehabilitation in a life that could be fit for Shakespeare.

. . . "If I had won the lottery 17 years ago, there would have been drinking and drugging and the police," he said.  "But instead, last night at about 11:30, I went down to the 7-Eleven, got a sausage and egg biscuit, some white doughnuts, a pint of milk, and came home and got into bed.  That was the winning $28 million celebration."  During his NFL career, Henderson succumbed to drugs and alcohol, and when he was 28, Cowboys Coach Tom Landry cut him from the team.  He said the most he made a year was $175,000, and by the time he left the NFL, "I was headed toward zero."

After he completed his prison sentence, he began speaking out against alcohol and drug addiction in prisons and schools, offering his story as an example of what not to do and as evidence of human resiliency.

He wrote an autobiography called "Out of Control: Confessions of an NFL Casualty."  And in 1997, he went on a weeklong hunger strike to raise money for the $250,000 Yellow Jacket Track and Field at 900 Neal St. in East Austin that he built though his nonprofit East Side Youth Services and Street Outreach.

"Now that track and field will be endowed for the next 100 years," Henderson said.

Other than that, he said it was too early to say how he would spend the money, though he vowed that part of it would be invested in the community.

He did say his mother wants a Lincoln Town Car, "and she's going to get one."

His 21-year-old daughter wants a house and a car, he said.  When told about the winnings, he said, his 6-year-old said, "Daddy, I just want some Tootsie Rolls."