Doug Henry experienced many horrific crashes during his career racing motorcycles, and sustained many injuries, some even career threatening. There was the crash in 1995 in Maryland where he suffered a broken back and the 2005 crash in Colorado where he endured a broken pelvis and ribs and a collapsed lung.
Whenever he’d crash, he’d immediately wiggle his toes to determine if his body was intact and functioning. On March 4, 2007, while practicing for a Supermoto race in Daytona, Fla., Henry hit some oil on the track, went down and slammed into a wall. This time, the Torrington resident couldn’t move his toes.
His career, in which he won three AMA Motocross championships and gained induction into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in Ohio, was over and his life forever changed.
‘I couldn’t move’
“I knew it right away. I couldn’t feel. I couldn’t move. I lay there just bawling. I couldn’t believe it,” said Henry, 38, of the crash that broke his back again and left him paralyzed from the waist down. “The first thing that flashes through your mind are the things you’ll never be able to do,” such as walk his daughter down the aisle, dance with his wife or take a stroll in the woods.
Operated on the day after the crash, Henry was soon transferred to the Shepherd Center rehabilitation hospital in Atlanta. Two weeks into recovery was “probably the lowest I’ve ever been in my life,” he said, recalling that he couldn’t even roll over in bed without assistance.
That was then.
When RIDE-CT visited Henry earlier this week at his hilltop home in Torrington, he wasn’t anywhere to be found.
His wife, Stacey, made a quick phone call and within minutes Henry came roaring up his long, unpaved driveway on an RUV, slipping into a wheelchair to chat about his life today and his new career as a race promoter.
The Shelton native is the force behind today’s New England Supermoto Grand Prix at Stafford Motor Speedway in Stafford, a daylong event featuring some of the world’s best riders. The event was staged for the first time last year. Henry rescued it when the original promoter opted out.
“As a rider and a fan, I had to have this happen. I had to hold this event,” said Henry, who admits to being “overwhelmed” by all that’s involved. “I have so many things that need to be tied up. I know I’m going to miss something.”
Riders will compete in three classes: Lite (250cc), Premiere (450cc) and Unlimited (more than 500cc). Henry hopes that the New England Supermoto Grand Prix draws a crowd of 5,000 and describes it as “a high-speed, power-sliding, bar-banging, dirt-jumping, hair-raising experience,” with riders atop hybrid motorcycles that are “a cross between a road-race machine and a dirt bike.”
“It should be a good event. We’re going to have a lot of kinks. It’s going to be the learning year,” he said.
Credits family for recovery
The past year and a half has been a learning experience for Henry as well, adjusting to life in a wheelchair, although he has progressed in his recovery to the point where he is able to walk on level surfaces with leg braces and crutches.
“I still do everything I did before,” said Henry, although “everything that I used to do takes more time. Some stuff’s so hard to do it’s not worth the effort,” such as weed whacking and picking up brush on his 90-acre property.
“It’s just another way of life,” he said all too matter-of-factly. “You learn so much sitting down all the time.”
Henry credits Stacey and their kids, 12-year-old Brianna and 9-year-old Ian, with making his recovery possible. “It’s really what keeps you going. Without having a wife and two kids, I wouldn’t be doing be half of what I’m doing now,” he said.
Having a new role as a race promoter has helped, too. “The race has really given me something to focus on. I’m trying to give the riders a race and the fans a great event to see,” he said.
Henry said he doesn’t regret returning to racing in mid-2003 after semi-retiring in 2000. “I’ve experienced every high and every low in my career. Someday I may look back and say I shouldn’t have gone back to racing, but not yet. Racing was my life,” he said.
And he hopes his children find something in their lives that they can be as passionate about as he was — and is — about racing. “If there’s one thing I could wish for is for them to find that one thing that they love; that one thing they want to do,” he said.
For Henry, wisdom of what’s important has come through adversity. “Appreciating something is a wonderful gift,” he said, such as a walk in the woods. “That’s what I miss the most.”
