Mid-Missouri native and former major league pitcher Tom Henke will host his 24th annual golf tournament for charity Sunday and Monday in Jefferson City.
The two-day event will include both a golf tournament at 10 a.m. Monday and a concert at 7 p.m. Sunday by Henke's close friend, country music icon Charley Pride.
Proceeds from the event will benefit the Jefferson City Cosmopolitan Club and the Jefferson City Special Learning Center (SLC).
"The funds (raised by Henke's golf tournament) have helped the center provide services for the over 600 children a year," said Debbie Hamler, director at the Special Learning Center. "In the early days of the event, the funds were combined with another source to build a sensory motor room for therapy and an additional classroom and Snoezelyn therapy room. More recently the SLC uses the funds to fill the gap in the cost of providing service and the revenues received."
Henke said he hosts the golf tournament fundraiser each year as his way of "paying" forward in return for the "excellent service and support they provided to me, my family and especially my daughter Amanda when we needed it most," Henke said.
Amanda, who was born with Down syndrome, was one of the very first students of the Special Learning Center.
The center is a member agency of the United Way of Central Missouri. It serves more than 600 families per year by providing early intervention and therapy services to children with developmental delays and disabilities.
Henke, who spent his final year in the majors pitching from the bullpen of the St. Louis Cardinals, was considered "one of the most dominant and feared closers" of the late 1980s and mid-1990s.
Nicknamed "The Terminator," Henke also played for the Toronto Blue Jays and the Texas Rangers. Despite the fact his final year with the Cardinals was one of the most successful of his career and being chosen to receive the J.G.Taylor Spink Award as the St. Louis Baseball Man of the Year, Henke retired from the game in 1995.
Upon announcing his retirement, Henke said he had, "always admired guys who have gone out at the top of their game."
"Sometimes you have to look at what's the most important thing in life," he said. "I'd like to see my kids grow up."
Shortly after retiring from baseball, Henke started hosting an annual golf tournament as a way of raising funds for the Special Learning Center. He decided to make the tournament an event, he said, as a way to pay the SLC back for all it had done for him and his family.
"There was a time when I would look at Amanda and wonder why did this have to happen to me. Why did one of my children have to be afflicted," Henke said. "But once we got involved with the Special Learning Center it didn't take long for those people to make me see that I was a very lucky human being to be blessed with my wonderful daughter."
"The support they provided to me, my wife and our whole family was absolutely unbelievable. So raising funds by hosting an annual tournament is my way of giving back a little bit of what those people gave me," Henke said.
The time Henke spent playing major league baseball gave him the opportunity to meet a number of celebrities, such as Whitey Herzog, and invite them to play in his tournament, including one very special friend, country music legend and partial owner of the Texas Rangers, Charley Pride.
"I first met Charley when I was playing for the Rangers," Henke said. "It was spring training and a bunch of us were warming up in the outfield. I could hear some music and thought to myself, 'Gee, that's nice somebody's playing a Charley Pride tape,'" Henke said with a laugh. "But then I looked around to see where the music was coming from and saw this guy out there just singing away while he played catch with one of the players."
Henke said he had always been a "big" Charley Pride fan and decided to "check out the guy" who sounded so much like him.
"Imagine my surprise when I walked over to introduce myself and discovered it was actually Charley Pride himself who was singing," Henke laughed.
Over the next several years the two became friends. In 2017, when he decided to ask Pride to appear at a dinner the night before his golf tournament, Pride agreed.
"He was just supposed be there to meet and greet the attendees, and sing a couple of songs," Henke said. "But once he started singing, the audience wouldn't let him leave so he wound up nearly doing a complete concert."
In fact, the event was so successful that, according to Henke, Pride agreed to comeback this year and do a formal concert.
Doors open for the Charley Pride concert at 5 p.m. at the Miller Performing Arts Center. Local Jefferson City talent Low Rent District will open at 6 p.m. and Pride will take the stage at 7 p.m. Tickets range from $75-$150. For ticket information, visit www.midmotix.com/events/charley-pride-in-concert or call 573-634-1428.
Registration for the 24th annual Tom Henke Charity Celebrity Golf Classic is 9 a.m. Monday at Meadow Lake Acres Country Club, 2600 Meadow Lake Drive in New Bloomfield. Tee off is at 10 a.m. with the awards presentation at 4 p.m.
More about legendary Charley Pride
When entertainer Charley Pride comes to Jefferson City this weekend it will be a celebration not only of more than 50 years in country music but also in recognition of his lifelong connection to organized baseball.
Born the son of a Mississippi sharecropper in the 1930s, Charley Pride is now a country music icon and one of the best-known African-American entertainers in the world.
While his first love may have been for country music, it was his prowess on the baseball diamond that first brought him wide scale recognition. Listening to the Grand Ole Opry on his father's Philco radio as a child first gave Pride his love of country music, but it was his talent with a baseball that was responsibility for his first taste of self-reliance, according to Charley Pride's official website.
During his teenage years, Pride played baseball for the Iowa State League and the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro American Leagues where he did basic training in Arkansas. It was in Arkansas where he met and married his wife of more than 50 years, Rozene.
In 1960, after a stint in the army, Pride moved to Montana where he played baseball for the Missoula Timberjacks and later worked in a mine while playing for the East Helena Smelterites.
With the help of a local disc jockey, Pride met country music stars Red Sovine and Red Foley in 1962, and with their encouragement began singing on a local radio station.
Over the next several years he switched back and forth between baseball and trying his hand at starting a music career in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1966, country music icon Chet Atkins heard Pride sing and signed him to a contract with RCA records. The rest, as they say, is history.
Pride's first top 10 single, "Just Between You and Me," hit the charts in 1967 and also garnered him his first Grammy nomination.
Since then he has won two Grammies, been named entertainer of the year and male vocalist of the year numerous times, had multiple No. 1 hits as well as more than 50 other top 10 singles and has sold tens of millions of records worldwide. In fact, he has sold so many records, that he ranks second only to Elvis Presley as the largest selling RCA artist of all time.
Pride has entertained at the White House for numerous presidents, including Jimmy Carter, both George Bushes, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. He has been inducted into both the Grand Ole Opry and the Country Music Hall of Fame. Pride's name has been emblazoned on Hollywood's Walk of Fame and, for a time, he had a theater in Branson, Missouri, where he did more than 200 shows per year.
In 2010, he joined a group of other businessmen, including baseball Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan, in purchasing the Texas Rangers major league baseball team.
Today, at more than 80 years old he lives in Dallas, Texas, with his family while he continues to do occasional tours, appear at the Grand Ole Opry several times a year and host a yearly breakfast for his fan club. In his leisure time, he plays golf, goes to the Ranger games and spends a few weeks each year at the club's spring training camp.
Among Pride's most famous recordings are the singles, "Kiss an Angel Good Morning," "Is Anybody Going to San Antoine," "Mississippi Cotton Pickin Delta Town," "Burgers and Fries," "Roll on Mississippi" and "Mountain of Love." In July 2017, Pride released a new album, "Music In My Heart," featuring 13 new recordings available on CD and for digital download.
For more information about Charley Pride, visit his official website at www.charleypride.com.