Jordan Hensley: Living Life to Its Fullest

by Charles McGuigan 09.2022

That night, Jordan was scheduled to board a plane at Austin International, right about the time her mom, Areina, caught a flight out of Atlanta, and both of them were headed to Richmond, the city they had called home most of their lives. The next day they were planning to visit Chad, Jordan’s younger brother
and only sibling. He had made a very bad mistake and ended up incarcerated, and was about to age out of juvenile detention to serve the remainder of his time in an adult correctional facility. There would be a court hearing the following Monday.

But this was Friday, and Jordan had just texted her mother. She smiled as she sent it across cyberspace. Jordan had spent the morning with her friend Erin Alexander in Austin. Erin’s father owned a vineyard where both young women worked. It was just seventy miles to the west in a place called Fredericksburg. Wine and travel were two of Jordan’s greatest passions, and she had just learned that Claude Alexander, the man who owned the vineyard, was grooming her for international travel and wine. It was a life dream about to be realized. 

Early that afternoon, the skies over Austin opened up. Rain cascaded like a waterfall, storm sewers backed up, flooding the streets, and Claude told the young women to stay put, that the vineyard was closing in a few hours. No need for them to come.  But Jordan, who had a deep work ethic, decided to make the trip along Route 290 anyway. They got in the car, fastened their seat belts, and Jordan flipped on the headlights and windshield wipers.  The rain was letting up, but the roads were still slick, so Jordan kept the speed down to fifty. They had just passed through the one-horse town of Hye and were nearing Stonewall, just a few miles from the vineyard.  And that’s when the end began. 

A tractor-trailer drifted across the yellow lines, side-swiped a car to Jordan’s left, and then jackknifed. Jordan’s car smashed into the semi-trailer with such force that both young women died on impact. 

Areina was finishing out her week. She’d seen the message her daughter had sent earlier. It read, “May the Fourth be with you.” On this fourth day of May, she would soon be reunited with her daughter in Richmond. She and her boyfriend were standing outside of their home when Areina’s cell phone chimed. 

The number was unfamiliar, and the feminine voice on the other end quavered. “Jordan has been in an accident,” the voice said. And as Areina turned to look at her boyfriend, planning to tell him they needed to change plans and fly out to Austin, she could hear that phantom voice sobbing, and in Areina’s skull her own voice erupted and yelled and pleaded,  “‘Don’t you f***ing say it. DON’T YOU F***ING SAY IT!”

That’s when the woman on the other end said clearly, “Jordan didn’t survive.”

Areina tossed the cell phone against the side of her house, and then passed out.

“I was out,”  Areina tells me. “I don’t know how many minutes, but I was out.” Her thin cheeks are streaked with tears as she remembers the moment this monstrosity entered her life, changed everything forever. 

On Sunday, as planned, Areina went to visit Chad in juvie.  The young man asked his mom why Jordan wasn’t there, and Areina told him that Jordan’s plane had simply been delayed.  

“I had to sit in front of my son for two hours and pretend that nothing had happened because I needed his head in the right place when he went to court the next day,” says Areina. “My world will never be the same. Things like that happen to other people; it’s the call we never can imagine. I can tell you the only thing that I can think of that’s worse is a missing child or watching your child suffer from something.”

Areina sips from a glass of ice water, and she is crying. “I had her when I was twenty-two,” she says. “Everything I did, and everything her daddy did, was for Jordan. We kind of grew up together. My friends would tell you that we had a very unique relationship. She was my best friend on top of it, literally. We were very silly, and I will never have that again with anyone else.” 

Their minds connected in a way that was almost telepathic. If a call came from Jordan, Areina would answer even before it rang. And if Jordan received a call from her mother, she would pick it up before it ever chimed.  Years ago, as they were driving to Melbourne, Florida on a sunny, blue sky morning, Jordan, who was looking out the window, said, “Ooh they shouldn’t have done that.”

Immediately, without even looking at what her daughter saw, Areina said “That was an ugly color for a door.” And Jordan nodded and smiled.

“We could hear what the other one was thinking,” says Areina. “And that would happen quite often.”

Jordan was named after one of Areina’s favorite anthropology professors at Longwood College (now Longwood University). “His name was Dr. Jim Jordan and he was a consultant on bones,” Areina says. “I was an anthropology major with a minor in history.” 

Even as a little girl, Jordan exhibited behaviors consistent with obsessive compulsive disorder. When she was just in kindergarten she made an odd request of Santa. “She kept saying, ‘I want those drawers daddy has at work,’” Areina remembers. “And we were like, ‘What the heck is she talking about?’” Turns out she wanted a filing cabinet, and on that Christmas morning so many years ago, Jordan found, much to her delight, a two-drawer filing cabinet under the Christmas tree. She labeled the top drawer A-N and bottom one O-Z. “She had it all the way through college, and she organized everything,” says Areina.

At about the time Jordan got her filing cabinet, the family moved to a large home in a still rural section of Chesterfield County just off Beach Road near Pocahontas State Park. Within the year the Hensleys welcomed the newest member of their family—Chad.  From the moment he was born, Jordan developed a strong bond with her little brother. “He was a big part of her life, and she was a big part of his life,” Areina says. ‘They were extremely close.  She was his protector and then some.  They spoke every day at 10 am, even when she was traveling. He knew that call was coming so he’d take a shower, and right after the shower his sister would call. They were incredibly close, she was the person he went to with everything.”

After graduating from high school, Jordan went off to James Madison University where she majored in journalism, but then decided to change her major to hospitality and stayed on an extra semester to earn her certification as a wine specialist.

It was during this time that life dealt a series of blows to Areina, and things began spiraling out of control. She and her husband, Jeff, divorced. After selling the family house, Areina rented a rancher so she and Chad could remain near Beach Road, and he could finish out his high school career at Manchester. Then her father, Edwin Harland Bruce, Jr. otherwise known as “Pookie”, passed away. To top it off, Areina lost her job of 20 years. And then there was the horror of the terrible mistake Chad made going into his senior year that would land him in juvenile detention. Everything was falling apart.

Jordan never returned home. Instead, after graduation, she took off for California. “She never came home after college and part of that was the divorce,” says Areina. “The home she knew and loved was no longer there, there’s nothing to come home to in her mind. So she packed up her stuff with her boyfriend and they moved out to Napa Valley. She has an incredible palate and she was an incredible salesperson. Eventually, she wanted to be an event planner.” So, in the very heart of Wine Country, along the Silverado Trail, Jordan went to work at Chimney Rock Winery. “As always, she took the bull by the horns,” her mother says. 

After working at Chimney Rock for a time, she took a job at a far less pretentious winery, a place called Tank Garage Winery in Calistoga, that operated out of a renovated 1930’s style gas station.

At about that time, Jordan was thinking about getting engaged, but she had doubts, and then her wanderlust kicked in. Jordan sold all of her earthly possessions and decided to see the world. With the money she scraped together in her pocket, and a backpack over her shoulder, Jordan headed overseas. 

She began “woofing” through World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. “You go places, and you you work sometimes, you might be painting a fence or doing other labor and you stay for free,” Areina explains. “So that’s what she starts to do. She goes to Australia and then down to New Zealand.” There’s a photo Areina has of her daughter either weeding or picking berries. Jordan sports a dark blue T-shirt emblazoned with this message: One Life, Don’t Waste It. “That became her mantra,” says Areina. “The irony is she didn’t live much longer after that picture was taken.”

But she would pack a lifetime of living into what remained of her life. She continued to travel widely. 

She left woofing and began to stay in hostels. After New Zealand she took off to Bali, and then Vietnam and Thailand. “One of the greatest gifts that I have been given was to go stay with her in Thailand,” says Areina. “We both got certified for scuba, but I didn’t last twelve hours in the hostel. We ended up staying in the penthouse on top of the Hilton in Bangkok.”

From there Jordan went to England and began her travels through Europe. She spent a fair amount of time with a family just outside of Rome, Italy, working as a sort of au pair. “They fell in love with Jordan,” Areina says. “She became part of their family and they took her to the beaches, and they took her to the mountains. They took her everywhere.”

A short while later Jordan returned to the States. She no longer considered Richmond her home. “She thought, “Where do I go? I’m gonna do wine. I’m young. I don’t want to come back to Virginia because there’s no home so to speak any more,’” says Areina. So she decided to move to Austin,  Texas where her father’s sister lived. And that’s when she got the job with Alexander Vineyards in Fredericksburg.

Which brings us back to the beginning of this story, and Areina remembers what it was like. “I went into shock,” she says. “I was beating my body and my head on the cement. I don’t know how much time went by.” And you can imagine a shattered cell phone nearby, no longer capable of telling the time.

But she ultimately kept it together and on the following Monday, along with other family members, appeared in court. Guards and other staff from juvie had all testified at how well Chad had done while incarcerated, but the judge ordered Chad to spend another four years in an adult correctional facility. 

The day before, Areina had spoken to a pastor out in California, who gave her the following advice about how to break the news to Chad. “You cannot sugarcoat it,” he told her. 

After the hearing, Chad met with his mother back at the juvenile correctional center. She had already told the guards and other staff there about Jordan’s death, and they all began to weep because it was as if they knew her for Chad had spoken so frequently of his sister.

“So when Chad came in the door he saw us all crying,” Areina recalls. “And he thinks we’re crying because of the time he got.”

To which Chad said, “Mom, don’t cry, I’ll be alright.” 

Areina looked Chad directly in the eyes. “Jordan is dead,” she said.

And Chad broke down in wails and tears and dropped to the floor. 

“And then I have to leave my son there,” Areina tells me. “And then we just go from there.”

Though Jordan was taken by the careless move of a seasoned trucker, Areina never bore him ill will. “I never blamed that driver once because that individual was not drunk and he was not on drugs,” says Areina. “He did something that we probably all have done at some point; the timing just sucked. He took full responsibility from the very beginning. I have sat down many times to write a letter to let him know that number one, we’re Christians; number two, that Jordan would have completely forgiven him; and number three, that my own son had been forgiven and got opportunities because people loved him and knew something went wrong. Who was I to throw a stone at someone?”

But the pain she experienced by this loss is almost incomprehensible. “It’s a grief you never get over,” Areina says. “You learn to manage it better over time. But it is definitely a different kind of grief than any other.  You won’t know, until it happens, and hopefully it will not happen to you.”

Not long after Jordan died, “One Life, Don’t Waste It” was born on Facebook. “It’s a place for people to remember Jordan,” Areina says. “She had a bigger impact on people than she realized. That page has more than fifteen hundred followers now.”

And from that page grew an annual fall event of the same name. It’s an evening of live music, good food, a silent auction, and more. Proceeds from past events went to FeedMore and Boston Children’s Hospital. This year the event will be bigger and better than ever. Slated for October 14, it will be held at The Historic Hippodrome Theater in Jackson Ward. Tickets are $50 per person. The beneficiary this year is Safe Harbor. “It’s basically for victims of domestic violence and human trafficking,” Areina says. “It’s for women and children, and it’s more than just a place to stay. “

Jordan would have loved this. Before her death she wanted to start a sort of bed and breakfast where women with troubled pasts could come to live while learning a trade or a skill. Even as she was globetrotting, Jordan sought out grants for the project. “I want to give back,” she told her mom. “And I want to help people.”

Along with her many other attributes, Jordan was generous to a fault, and empathetic and kind. She would share whatever she had.

Not long ago, Areina, in a further tribute to her daughter, decided to become a life coach. 

“There’s a strength in me that I got from my upbringing,” says Areina Hensley. “There’s a strength I have called my support system. There’s a strength I have called my faith; it was shaken, but it’s there. There are all these things I have that were given to me by others. And a lot of people don’t have that. So me being a life coach and to help others is my gift to Jordan.”