“This Is Chris”: A Legacy Woven in Love and Loss

There are moments in grief that are quiet and private—and then there are moments that unfold in front of thousands, where remembrance becomes something shared. One of these moments played out in 2022 in the stands of a football stadium filled with fans who had gathered to cheer on a team chasing its first-ever championship.

During the Super Bowl LVI run of the Cincinnati Bengals, Carolyn Glaspy, the mother of former Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry, attended as many games as possible to cheer them on. She brought with her a custom blanket — one that carried far more than warmth despite the bone-chilling Ohio temperatures. Draped over railings in the stadium, the blanket featured an image of Glaspy’s son, serving as a visual reminder that while he may have been gone since 2009, he had not been forgotten.

This wasn’t the first time Glaspy’s Tribute Blanket had made a public appearance — and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Henry’s tragic ending

On December 16, 2009, Chris Henry jumped from the bed of a moving pickup truck driven by his fiance, who was also the mother of his three young children. With one arm in a cast due to a fracture suffered during a November game, Henry’s landing was catastrophic. At the hospital he was declared brain dead. The next day, his mother made the heartwrenching decision to remove her beloved 26-year-old son from life support, directing the doctors to harvest Henry’s organs to save the lives of others. 

Henry’s homegoing services were held on December 22 in Westwego, Louisiana, near his hometown of Belle Chasse. The entire Bengals organization, coaches, and players, along with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, former teammates, and New Orleans Saints players were in attendance. 

The beginning of an ongoing journey

Back in Cincinnati, funeral directors J.C. Battle, III and his brother, Lynwood Battle, Jr., the third-generation owners of JC Battle and Sons Funeral Home, were also mourning Henry’s loss. They wanted to honor Henry and provide some comfort to his mother.

“I said, ‘Lynwood, we need to do something special for the mother and the team’,” J.C. Battle recalls.

As they did with every family they personally served, the Battles gifted the Cincinnati Bengals with a beautiful Tribute Blanket from Funeral Home Gifts. They met the Bengals representatives at Paul Brown Stadium and hung the blanket in the team’s locker room, where it would serve as inspiration during the next home game.

“We put it in a position that every time they would run out, they’d pass it, and they touched the blanket,” says J.C. Battle. “And they kicked butt that game.” 

Eventually, the Bengals organization presented the blanket to Chris Henry’s mother, Carolyn Glaspy. Then one day, the Battles answered a doorbell ring to find Glaspy standing there with the blanket folded across her arm.

“She said, ‘I had to find you guys who did this for my son’,” J.C. Battle recalls. Glaspy told them that the blanket had become her constant companion. “‘I take it everywhere I go. When I have the interviews, I open it up’.”

Spreading comfort across the community

As he did with Glaspy, J.C. Battle III routinely requests Tribute Blankets to present to individuals in his community on notable occasions in addition to those he gifts to the families he serves. Both gestures have proven invaluable to J.C. Battle and Sons Funeral Home. 

Battle says that people recognize not only the kind gesture of a complimentary gift, but also the blankets’ incredible personalization details and quality. In fact, he credits the Tribute Blankets for a 20 percent increase in his firm’s calls. 

“People have come to us because of the blankets,” Battle says. “They use our services because of what we did; because we gave someone a blanket.”

He works closely with Funeral Home Gifts to ensure that each aspect of every piece precisely and creatively reflects the person it is meant to honor, which makes every blanket — and every interaction with a family — unique and heartfelt. Even so, his 2009 encounter with Glaspy still holds a special place in Battle’s heart.

“It still affects me that we did something to help the grief of the mother,” he says. “That’s what we wanted to create. We call it an ‘M.F.E.’ — a meaningful funeral experience.”

A special blanket for a special mother

In the coming years, Glaspy and her blanket would have more meaningful experiences at Bengals games, celebratory rallies, and other events, including an incredibly poignant moment. 

In November 2010, Glaspy, a Hurricane Katrina survivor, even took the blanket to the hospital where Henry had died eleven months earlier. Struggling to hold back tears, she unfurled her blanket as she met four of the people who had received Henry’s organs. A reporter from the Los Angeles Times covered the meeting, writing of Glaspy’s blanket that she “carries it everywhere.”

“This is Chris,” she told the organ recipients. 

More than a blanket

Glaspy and her “Chris Henry blanket” have garnered the support of Bengals fans who share the grief of losing an amazing talent with unlimited potential at such a young age and under such terrible circumstances. She’s also caught the attention of several media outlets, each of whom ask her about the blanket she inevitably holds with her arms spread wide so the full image of her son can be fully appreciated.

Chris Henry’s mother is in attendance for today’s Bengals rally 🧡🖤 Even after her son passed away, she says she continues to love and support the team. pic.twitter.com/OlurEGc4kW — FOX19 NOW (@FOX19) February 16, 2022

“I cried and I laughed with the fans,” she said in one interview. “So many people cherish my son.”

Glaspy also uses questions about the blanket as an opportunity to promote organ donation and tell others about how many people Henry’s donations helped.

“The reason I carry it is because Chris was a donor; he saved four lives,” she told a reporter in 2022. “So this represents the four lives that Chris donated his life to. This is showing that Chris is still alive and living in someone else. It changed their lives.

Still living on

Thus, Chris Henry’s legacy lives on not only in memory, but in shared experience — even beyond the stadium stands.

This is just one example of the power of the Tribute Blankets crafted so carefully by Funeral Home Gifts. In the case of Carolyn Glaspy and Chris Henry, the blanket became a way for a mother to bring her son back into the place he loved most. To let him be seen, to let him be cheered for, and to let him, in some small but powerful way, still be part of the game.