Wife recalls ‘larger than life’ outdoorsman who went overboard in Chesapeake Bay

HAMPTON, Va. (WAVY) — Ready to do more fishing, hunting and living the good life, Keith Henley was months away from the retirement that he was living for, but was not to be.

Keith Thomas Henley, 58, of Providence Forge in New Kent County, was set to retire soon from Philip Morris in Richmond. He was on a boat last week fishing, doing something he loved, when he jumped overboard to retrieve a fishing net about a mile-and-a-half from Grandview Beach in Hampton. His body has not been found and he is presumed dead.

His wife, Dawn Henley, pulled out a photo of the “classic Keith Henley” — cigarette hanging out of his mouth, a big smile on his face, standing with his hunting buddy, David Williams, known as D.W.

“D.W. called him ‘hair on fire’ because he was always going from one thing to another … and just staying busy,” Dawn Henley said.

Another photo shows Keith Henley with a 42-point deer.

It was clear he loved to hunt.

He carved ruddy, blue-billed ducks, beautiful carvings his wife was holding.

Last August, Keith Henley bought a power boat built by Parker.

One or two days before he died, he caught his largest cobia ever — there’s a picture of that too.

It was clear he loved to fish.

Then, last Thursday, July 11 Keith Henley was fishing with a co-worker when his wife got a call from the U.S. Coast Guard.

“The person said, ‘I got some bad news [for] you,'” Dawn Henley said, recalling the conversation. “‘Your husband jumped in the water to get a net’ — I was not surprised that he jumped into the water after a net. He was impulsive. I could see that happening. I could see him doing that, then saying, ‘Oh no, what have I done.’”

His friend on the boat with him was unable to get him back into the boat, and Dawn Henley said that co-worker at Philip Morris is devastated.

“I won’t say who it is — he calls all the time [and] he feels terrible,” Dawn Henley said. “He was trying to get him a rope and he just went under. He said he saw him come up and go down. He said he had to get the anchor up. I don’t think he knew how to operate the automatic anchor. He said he was about 10 yards from him — so close.”

Dawn Henley told us her husband’s friend had been in the boat before.

“Keith expected a lot from people without giving them proper instruction,” she said. “The life jackets had been put away, and I was surprised he couldn’t tread water for five minutes. I’m wondering if he had some type of a heart attack out there. We are told he died from accidental drowning.”

In the past week, Dawn Henley has been reflecting — emotional, remembering happy times with a man she knew most of her life from high school to marriage.

Towards the end of the interview Dawn got emotional.

“You know — hold on, so I would say,” she said, then clearing her throat and putting up her head.

“What flashes in my head — he was so larger than life,” she said. “He was always going from one thing to the next, trying to live life to the fullest. Now, I’m left with thinking of Keith out in the water, afraid.”

The early years

Keith and Dawn Henley were high school sweethearts.

“He was a little too old for me, so we broke up and married other people,” she said.

About 30 years later, he saw a notice of her parents’ 50-year anniversary.

“I was listed with no spouse,” she said. “So he reached out to me. He sent me a card and said, ‘Hey, if you ever want to talk about the last 30 years, give me a call.”

That call would eventually end in marriage on May 18, 2019.

“He was a nature boy,” she said. “I called him Natty Bumppo from James Fenimore Cooper’s Leather Stocking Tales. He could never get it right. He would call himself Daddy Beachamp. I said, ‘No, it’s Natty Bumppo.”

She always thought her husband had a real talent for carving, and she wished he had continued to pursue it.

“He had a lot of potential there,” she said. “In fact, we were going to enter his ducks in a competition in White Stone and then COVID hit, and they canceled the competition.”

She remembers him this way.

“Everything he did consumed him,” she said. “If he was fishing, that was his life. If he was carving, that was his life. He’s making moonshine?

“That’s his life, you know.”

Memorial Service

There will be a memorial service for Keith Henley at 2 p.m. Sunday, July 21 at the Poquoson Yacht Club, 417 Messick Road.

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