A veteran died in a bike crash in Portland, bringing together a family long in need of healing

They set out in the middle of March for a Portland hospital room to say goodbye to a man they no longer knew.

The man’s father flew in from Michigan.

His mother and older sister drove up from California.

All traveling with memories and regrets.

Days earlier, on March 12, 40-year-old Johnathan Henderson rode his bike through a red light in downtown Portland. He crashed into a car in the intersection.

Henderson’s family set out for Portland – the first time they’d been in the city – after learning Henderson, in a coma, would not survive.

His mother hadn’t seen her son since he was 3.

His father, remarried and out of touch for decades, recalled a brief telephone conversation with his boy, oh, maybe six years ago.

His older sister last communicated with her brother more than seven years ago in a series of texts.

The man they were coming to see in the hospital bed was a stranger.

***

Four years ago, Johnathan Henderson, who had bounced around for years, settled down in Portland.

He lived with his dog, “Callie,” in an apartment on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard. He made a living on his bike, riding thousands of miles a year, delivering food from Portland-area restaurants to customers.

The people closest to him in Portland – bike enthusiasts, a few people in the apartment building where he lived and a handful of clerks at a nearby convenience store – knew only that the gregarious man had served in the U.S. Marine Corps.

On the night of the crash, Henderson was rushed to Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Northeast Portland.

The next day two trauma social workers in the emergency room looked for clues in Henderson’s wallet in an attempt to find Henderson’s family. Inside they found a card with his Veterans Administration caseworker’s name.

After reaching the agency’s administrator on duty, one of the social workers learned Henderson’s VA paperwork listed his grandmother as an emergency contact. A social worker called the grandmother, got Henderson’s father’s telephone number and then called him, too.

Word spread, and soon, Henderson’s father, mother and sister stood bedside at the hospital in Portland. Because of the parents’ bitter divorce, it was the first time in decades they’d all been in the same room.

The parents had not spoken in more than 35 years.

The daughter had not seen her father in nearly 15 years.

And here they were in a hospital room looking down at a man unable to open his eyes or acknowledge their presence.

Six days after the accident, Johnathan Henderson died.

He left behind a gift.

He gave his family an opportunity to heal.

***

“Families are complicated,” said Vernon Henderson, the father. “Oh, Jesus, I’m going to cry.”

Vernon Henderson, a former landscaper who remarried after he and his wife divorced long ago, lives in a Detroit suburb. His son, raised by his father in Michigan, joined the Marines after graduating from high school.

While stationed in Okinawa, one of Johnathan Henderson’s arms was seriously injured in a work-related accident.

“He never said what happened,” said Vernon Henderson of the accident. “All I know is he had terrible pain and they prescribed him OxyContin.”

The Marine Corps, Vernon Henderson said, medically discharged his son six months before his tour of duty ended. Johnathan returned home and got into what his father described as “trouble.”

“He was hooked on OxyContin,” Vernon Henderson said. “He tried to clean himself up. He got a job, then he’d get hooked again. He’d disappear. Then he’d come back. Then he’d disappear again. Finally, he was gone.”

Johnathan’s sister, two years older, lives in Watsonville, California, a town about 17 miles south of Santa Cruz.

“A lot of things are out of your control in childhood,” said Alyson Henderson. “I joined the Navy straight out of high school. I needed to get away. I think my brother joined the Marines for the same reason.”

When Johnathan Henderson was a toddler, his parents moved the family from Michigan to Seattle for a job opportunity. His mother, Sharon Alvarez, soon went to California to help her parents there after her father suffered a stroke.

She returned to Seattle two months later and discovered her family was gone. “I had no idea where they went,” Alvarez said. “By the time I learned they were back in Michigan, my husband had filed for a divorce, remarried and had custody of the children.”

It was a complex, fraught situation, and from that point through the rest of their childhoods, Johnathan and Alyson had no contact with their mother, she said. Alvarez moved to California to be close to her parents and later remarried.

“I missed my son’s life growing up,” she said. “Now that he is gone, I will never get back his future.”

In the years after graduating from high school, Alyson Henderson said she saw her brother “maybe” five times in total.

“We didn’t have a lot of interaction in our adult lives,” she said. “I wish things it could have been different. It just wasn’t in the cards for us.”

For all families, the opportunity to reshuffle those cards is rare.

Except, in this case, in the crucible of a hospital room of a dying man.

“All those tubes coming out of him,” said Vernon Henderson. “I hope he heard me tell him I loved him.”

The scene was unbearable for Alvarez.

“How could this be my beautiful son?” she said. “How can he leave me without knowing how much I love him, without knowing I have always loved him?”

She said she recognized that her ex-husband was suffering too.

In that room, the family met Filly Brady, a member of the Portland family Johnathan Henderson created.

Originally from Nashville, Brady served a stint in the U.S. Navy, ended up in Portland and lived in the same Southeast Portland apartment building Henderson called home.

“He was friendly, but pretty quiet,” said Brady. “Like a lot of veterans, he liked to sus people out in the beginning.”

Brady said when Johnathan Henderson learned other veterans lived in the apartment building, he created an informal support group. Bike rides, group dinners, hanging out and talking.

Brady learned Johnathan Henderson was in the hospital from their landlord who’d been called by one of the the emergency room social workers. She had looked up Henderson’s address on Google street search, saw a sign on the side of building listing the management company’s telephone number and called it.

Brady met Johnathan Henderson’s family as they held vigil in the hospital room. There, he filled in some of the blanks for them on his friend’s Portland life.

The family learned that Johnathan Henderson no longer used drugs, and only enjoyed a beer now and then. They discovered he liked painting to express himself.

“He became a real person,” said his mother. “We learned he had heart and was full of compassion.”

Johnathan Henderson’s family hung on every nugget of information.

“We took comfort that my brother finally found what he so needed,” said Alyson Henderson. “Family isn’t just blood. We were grateful to know my brother was doing the work he needed to heal because of the people he connected with.”

When it became clear there was no hope for Johnathan’s recovery from the bike crash, the family had to make a tough choice.

The family, realizing Brady knew more about him than they did, brought him in on the discussion.

What would the man in the bed want?

“John was a one-day-at-a-time kind of guy,” said Brady. “I told his family that John was a Marine. Always on watch. For his friends and his community.”

That description helped Johnathan Henderson’s family decide to tell doctors to donate his organs.

“He could help so someone else doesn’t have to suffer,” said Alyson Henderson. “He could help somebody have more time with their family.”

Then he was gone.

“I brought John into this world,” his mother said. “And I was there the moment he left it. That’s something that nobody can take from me.”

Alvarez does not know what the future holds, but she believes healing is a process.

“I can say that I will make every day count,” she said. “And I’ll make the people in my life count twice as much as ever.”

In the hospital room, the family, splintered and estranged for so long, talked. These were small steps, with no idea where they might ultimately lead.

“I told my father I loved him,” said Alyson Henderson. “He said he loved me, too.”

The chance to talk together, after all these years, still surprises her.

“In a weird way,” she said, “this was kind of a gift from my brother.”

***

This week, on Monday, April 29, Johnathan Henderson’s funeral was held at Willamette National, a federal military cemetery in Happy Valley.

His father didn’t have the funds to make a second trip to Portland.

His mother, who has a bad back and couldn’t tolerate another car ride, scrapped together enough money for a plane ticket.

Once again, his sister drove from California.

It was a traditional military funeral.

A stoic honor guard.

The folding of the flag and presentation of it to Johnathan Henderson’s mother.

Salutes.

The shock of the explosive three-volley salute.

The mournful sound of “Taps.”

Johnathan Henderson’s cremains are buried in Section 9, grave No. 631.

His parents and sister plan to return to Portland to visit the grave.

Small steps, along a path cleared by a stranger who is no longer with this world.

-- Tom Hallman Jr. is a reporter on the public-safety team. Reach him at 503 221-8224; thallman@oregonian.com