John Henderson (guard)
American football player (1912-2020)
John Paul Henderson (December 24, 1912 – October 16, 2020) was an American college football player who played four seasons as a guard for the Texas Longhorns. Raised in Fort Worth, Texas, he was a member of the team from 1932 through 1936. He later worked for Humble Oil for over thirty years and eventually became the school's oldest living former football player in 2010.
Early and personal life
Henderson was born on December 24, 1912, and grew up in Fort Worth, Texas. He entered the University of Texas at Austin in 1932 and joined the Longhorns as a guard that same year. He remained a member of the team until 1936, when he graduated with a master's degree in education. He met his wife, Charlotte Curtis (November 8, 1914 – October 26, 2021), in class in 1934. They were married on December 22, 1939, and celebrated their 80th anniversary in 2019, as the oldest living couple in the world.
Football
Henderson joined the Longhorns in an era when the University of Texas neither recruited players nor offered them scholarships. To support himself, he worked at the Gregory Gymnasium two hours a day to earn $30 a month (approximately $708 in present-day terms).
“John Henderson (guard)” enters the record as american football player (1912-2020). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what John, Henderson and guard can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q29652587. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1912, 2020, 1932 and 1936.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Henderson (guard)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.