A great father and dependable mentor

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A great father and dependable mentor

By Gerry Hostetler – March 29, 2011

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Children filled his life. He was a father of four, a stepfather of five - or was it the other way around? He never really paid that much attention to which was which - they all were his.

So were the 36 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

He was also a Police Athletic League football and baseball coach to countless boys from the community.

Henry Clay Hood, 68, of Charlotte died Tuesday March 22, 2011, at Emory Cancer Hospital in Atlanta. He was a retired Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer with 28 years of service.

Early in his career, Henry met a lady in distress. The year was 1972, and Dorothy Wallace had a flat tire.

He changed her tire, and they began dating. They married two years later.

With Dorothy, Henry inherited a ready-made family. She already had Belinda, Cathy, Thedrick, David and Allen, who died in 1995. The couple added Su-Donna, Kaynda, Tekeya and Corey to the family. The word "stepchild" was unused in the Hood household.

"He was a godsend," Dorothy said. "He was a godly man who loved and took great care of his family. He was studying to become a Jehovah's Witness and join my church; he had read the Bible through four times."

Henry's hobbies were collecting baseball and football cards. He'd given up his coin collections, but still liked golf.

"He loved baseball cards," said grandson Jeffrey Monteith, "He coached football. He loved to go fishing in the Catawba River and loved to spend time with the family. He was a person you could depend on."

Grandson Josh Leu said, "He's a good man, a fair man too. If you need help, he'd help you. He used to take me to Bearcat Lake, where we'd catch catfish and throw them back."

Henry and Dorothy loved flea markets and traveled to Myrtle Beach, Anderson and Greer in South Carolina searching for a particular coffee pot. They finally found the right percolator, and it made their coffee every morning.

"He's a good man, a kindhearted man who'd do for anybody. He gave me his blessings to marry his daughter, Kaynda," Rashan Brown said.

"He was an easygoing dad. As long as we didn't lie to him, he gave us our way," Kaynda said. "He spoiled us; he was a real good father and all my friends loved to spend the night. They said we had the coolest parents. He was down-to-earth and I was blessed to have had a father like him."

Tekeya, the youngest said, "My dad was an awesome dad. He supported me and pushed me to my fullest advantage. He was special, like my best friend."

Tekeya, who plays softball and runs track, said, "We traveled to Lexington, Myrtle Beach and Columbia, S.C. and to Maryland."

Son Thedrick Wallace has known Henry since Thedrick was four years old. "He was a straight-up man, did things by the book, always did things right and raised me to want to do the right thing," he said.

Corey Hood, Henry's youngest son said, "He served his city well and was the greatest dad a man could ever have. Every man should be like him. He was responsible, very independent, had a sense of humor and knew how to treat kids - he treated everybody as equal."

Cathy's husband, James Tillman said Henry was more than a police officer. "He fought crime in two ways. Working with the kids in old Dalton Village and Fairview Homes, he kept them off the streets and had an impact on those kids. He was a big influence in their lives, and he loved working with them for 15 or 20 years. They really appreciated that."

We should all appreciate the kind of father and man that was Henry Hood. We just wish that there were enough to go around.

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Editor's note: This is our series called Lives That Matter. Written by Charlotte writer Gerry Hostetler, this weekly feature will profile individuals, recently deceased, who had a positive impact on those around them.