The visitors’ bleachers at Chelsea High School’s Jerry Niehaus Field were packed with Dexter supporters on Friday night, but the football team was absent its biggest fan.

Henry Thurston, the team’s manager for 47 years, lost his battle with pancreatic cancer on Thursday morning.

Henry Thurston ate, drank and slept Dexter football and he loved the Chelsea-Dexter rivalry. And the coaches and players reciprocated.

“Henry has been a part of these games for 47 years,” said Barbieri, pointing to his hand, where he had “Henry” written in permanent marker. Many of the Dexter players paid similar tribute with “HT” on eye black and written on taped up wrists and ankles.

“We miss him,” Barbieri said. “We miss him a lot.”

Before the game, players from both teams gathered at the 50-yard line to pay tribute to Thurston. The crowd joined in a moment of silence.

There was no hesitation on the part of the part of Chelsea coach Brad Bush to honor Thurston’s memory. Bush had grown to know Thurston through the years and still recalls, with a look of great joy on his face, his favorite “Henry memory.”

“(Dexter) kicked it to us and (the ball carrier) took it all the way to the house,” recalled Bush. “(Thurston) runs out on the field, and you see him looking, and here comes the ball. Henry just let him go by and got the tee… he was doing his job.

“He was an awesome guy.”

In fact, Thurston -- a through-and-through Dreadnaught supporter -- had showed signs of a soft spot for the Bulldogs as well.

“Whenever we’d do something good, I would get a letter with a newspaper clipping,” Bush recalled. “Whatever it was Nick Hill, playoffs, he’d always send it and he’d always have a note. He didn’t have that good of hand writing, so it’d be scribbled. But he’d always send it.”

Chelsea won 17-7 on Friday and qualified for the playoffs for the 12th consecutive year. For the first time in those 12 years, Bush won’t be receiving a letter to congratulate him on the win.

Note: In September 2004, former Ann Arbor News sports reporter Mark Heller wrote an award-winning feature on Thurston. We're reprinting it today:

The most popular man in Dexter

By MARK HELLER

The shy man took to the stage in front of 400 people he didn't know.

Henry Thurston, a 57-year-old with a stocky build, thinning hair and constant half-smile, walked up the steps, nervous as can be.

He stood in front of a full Lansing banquet room to accept entrance into the Michigan High School Football Coaches Hall of Fame. Twenty years on the sidelines or 100 wins are usually the minimum requirements for membership.

Thurston has been around Dexter High School for 41 years and counting, but he's not a coach. He's the team manager.

And of the five people enshrined in late January, Thurston had the largest contingent of supporters with him. He was the last to speak. With help from Dreadnaughts coach Tom Barbieri, Thurston's four lines were written out on paper, making sure everyone was properly thanked.

He couldn't get through it. The tears started and Thurston tried ad-libbing, but the words never came out.

The crowd roared anyway, delivering a standing ovation for a man who can't drive, can barely read or write and lives with his mom, but who gathers helmets, pads and tackling dummies every day as quickly as he did in 1963.

On this night, Thurston saw how 41 years of doing the little things have made him a household name on and away from the Dexter fields.

"Not many teams have a guy like that," Chelsea coach Brad Bush said. "Guys like him are the neat things about sports."

A FULL DAY'S WORK

Dexter is deserted beneath the 4 a.m. sky on a Thursday in August.

Four sets of dim flourescent bulbs buzz in the very back of the Dexter Bakery. In the side alley, the aroma is invigorating. Thursday's pastries, doughnuts, pretzels and breads are baking, with the irresistible aroma trickling into the side alley.

At 4:20 a.m., Thurston is rolling.

He started out sluggish in these wee hours. The Dexter football team picnic and a late Detroit Tigers game made Wednesday a late night. But an hour later, he's scraping, cleaning and baking as he has for five pre-dawn shifts each week since 1967.

By sunrise, he's scraped off baking pans and helped prepare the next day's cakes and pretzels. After daybreak, it takes two hours to scrub and wash the pile of dishes.

His favorite part of the job comes at 7:30, when he takes dozens of small hunks of dough and throws them into a machine from the 1930s which flattens the dough. Then he rolls the dough into a long, thin tube, and folds the ends over. Friday's pretzels are ready for baking.

He clocks out by 10 a.m., but the work day is far from over. He needs a quick nap to be ready for the Dreadnaughts' evening scrimmage. It's football season again, and Dexter's biggest fan has a lot of equipment waiting for him.

Thurston -- the most popular man in town, according to many Dexter locals -- walks six blocks to work at 3:30 every morning, then walks a mile to the football field. He walks or gets a ride everywhere, because he has to.

A mild mental disability prevents him from driving and makes reading and writing difficult. He took special education classes in school. He still lives with his 78-year-old mother, Leona Toon, and Charles, one of his three brothers, just off Baker Road.

His speech is fine. Though reserved, he carries conversations as well as anyone.

"You'd have to spend a long, long, long time with him before you'd ever notice," Leona said.

Dexter sports were always his passion. The town offered recreational programs for its kids in the summer at Silver Lake. Every day was something different: arts and crafts, whiffle ball, kickball, swimming or Frisbee. Twice a week, Thurston was in the middle of it all.

The camps were run by the Walsh family. Marty was a do-everything player at Dexter in the early 1990s, while Tom Walsh coached. Now, Marty is an assistant to Brad Bush at rival Chelsea, while Thurston hasn't changed a bit.

"He's ageless," Marty said. "He really is."

GENUINE, SELFLESS

As a Dexter freshman, Thurston nonchalantly walked into football coach Al Ritt's office one day in 1963 and asked if he could be the football team manager. Ritt said sure.

A half-dozen football coaches later, the note left on the desk for the next coach was always the same: Keep Henry.

Barbieri got the message before he had met anyone at the school. "Who's Henry?" were the first words out of Barbieri's mouth.

He found out quickly. Thurston's the guy who hauls equipment back and forth from the football fields to the new shed, often serves as ball boy and helps set up drills.

He sends letters to University of Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr, even though he can't write more than a few sentences, wishing the Wolverines luck. His bedroom is a shrine to Michigan football, from the bedspread, to the lamp on the nightstand, to the "M Go Blue" border on his walls.

Each area coach who wins a conference title or makes the playoffs receives cards and newspaper clippings from Thurston.

"Genuine is the first word that comes to mind," said Dexter baseball coach Al Snider. "He will do as much as he can for anybody."

Barbieri includes Thurston in everything Dexter football related. He gets clothing, a coach's jacket and travels with the football team to summer camp in Windsor.

Thurston still wears the same jersey given to him in 1963, and he still works like it's the second day on the job. When Chelsea returned a kickoff for a touchdown last season against Dexter, the next morning's film session caught Thurston sprinting on the field to pick up the tee, then trying to get off the field while Chelsea was still running down the sideline.

"He was so eager to get on and off the field he almost got nailed," Bush said.

CUTTING BACK

Football owns Thurston's heart, but it didn't always. He spent time as a manager for the Dexter basketball team, and most of the past 40 years helping the baseball team each spring.

Baseball was Thurston's spring version of football. Three times, Thurston traveled with the team to Florida for their version of spring training. He handled the team's equipment and ran through the nearby woods to track down foul balls.

"He never complained," Snider said. "It took him until the last couple years before he'd take a day off."

Thurston doesn't help with baseball anymore. Snider said it's too dangerous for Thurston to walk down Baker and Shield Roads to the new baseball field. Snider used to pick up Thurston at his house, but now it's too far away.

"It still hurts," said Thurston.

But he also knows his football tenure is ending. This fall, Leona tried to talk her sone into quitting football. Once again, she got the "Just let me do it this year, it won't hurt," retort.

He's giving himself another year or two at the bakery and the football field. By then, he hopes to have enough money in his bank account to take it easy.

THE FUTURE

Leona was born in Crystal Falls, a town of 3,000 residents in the Upper Peninsula near the Michigan-Wisconsin border, before she came to Dexter in 1942. Relatives still live there. Eventually, somebody will have to take care of Thurston when she's gone.

He might already have a spot on the Crystal Falls football team. Leona's niece is friends with the coach's wife. Townspeople have already seen a local story or two written about Thurston.

So how about folding pretzels at 4 a.m. and working the sidelines for somebody else?

"Probably not," he said, sitting outside the bakery two hours before sunrise. "It just wouldn't be the same."

Mark Heller is now a sports writer at the East Valley Tribune in suburban Phoenix, Ariz.