Kitchen Tune-Up

By Leana Conway, Woodstock Resident

Anthony Hall had every excuse to fail. With a drug-addicted mother and absent father, he grew up in a neighborhood blighted by poverty and crime. The odds were that he would be in jail, on drugs, or dead. But he’s not. A father, husband, life coach, productive member of society, and accomplished abstract artist, Anthony is alive and doing well in Cherokee County. How did he survive his past and thrive in the present?

Anthony says, “God and the people He put in my life revealed a path for me to be saved,” despite the fact that he grew up surrounded by pain and violence.

Anthony’s life began in Hurt Village, a housing project in West Memphis, Tennessee. Michael Oher, the homeless athlete featured in the movie The Blind Side, lived in the same desperate place before a family in the suburbs took him in. Anthony’s mother was on drugs and the street, and his father was unknown, so Anthony’s grandmother raised him, and he referred to her as Mom.

Even the love of Anthony’s grandmother couldn’t protect him from the realities he lived in. As he points out, “It was a place where you are either prey or the predator, and you have to choose from an early age which one you are going to be. I was shot at, robbed at gunpoint, and tied up at that young age. It’s just the way things were for all us kids.”

He managed to scrape by unscathed until he was fourteen, when he came to a crossroads. His beloved grandmother died, and Anthony was the one to find her body. She was the only person who had given him real love. Anthony recalls that dark time, “When my grandmother passed, I was dumbfounded. I felt lost. It crushed my world, and I couldn’t eat for two weeks.”

Unwilling to go back to the place where his grandmother died, he asked to live with his uncle in Orange Mound, a slightly better neighborhood. uuu

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Anthony spends countless hours pouring out his creativity on canvas.

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Anthony’s pop-culture sports pieces are a big hit with a variety of customers. They showcase a new way to represent our favorite athletes.

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Anthony almost always takes photos with the purchasers of his art, showing his appreciation for their support of his passion project.

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Anthony’s art isn’t limited to canvas—he’ll paint just about any inanimate object, including shoes, hats, bags, and more.

His new school, Melrose High, offered new uuu opportunities, if Anthony was willing. He joined the football team with its young, dynamic coach, Timothy

Thompson. Like a father figure, Timothy took

Anthony in, and when Anthony’s living arrangements with his uncle fell through, Timothy set it up for

Anthony to live with Gloria Suggs, the mother of another player.

Anthony smiles warmly and his eyes hold a trace of awe, remembering his time at the Suggs household.

“Ms. Suggs was amazing. She would have half the football team over for the night—boys sleeping everywhere in her small house, even on the kitchen floor—and that woman never complained once. She was phenomenal.” Ms. Suggs stepped in and was and still is a mother to Anthony.

Ms. Suggs is a police officer in Memphis, Tennessee, these days. Warmth and pride fill her voice when talking about her “second son,” Anthony. “Sometimes

I look back and think, Lord, how did I feed all those boys and have Anthony live with us? But when I was young, my aunt took me in and raised me, and I promised the Lord if I ever saw a child in need of a home and a mother, I would take that child in, because I’m saving someone’s baby.”

Ms. Suggs chokes up when she says, “Anthony has been such a blessing to me. He never forgets a birthday or Mother’s day, and he introduces me as his second mom.” With the stability of the Suggs home, Anthony could concentrate on going to school and playing football.

Anthony says Coach Thompson tapped into a hunger in the players on his team. The coach loved and believed in them enough to hold them accountable. “Once we saw players start going from the team onto college on scholarships, we were sold. The team feared and respected him, and he talked to us about God and life before every practice.”

After graduating from Melrose High, Anthony went to Stillman College, where he played football. Anthony graduated with a degree in health and physical education.

The first year after college, at twenty-five years old, Anthony worked and coached girls’ basketball at the same school as a friend. Anthony describes a life-changing series of events this way, “My friend was picking me up every day, and he was always playing sermons from his pastor. Before I knew it, I was listening and writing things down. I found out I was hungry for every word of the Gospel.” After a while he began attending church and committed his life to Christ.

The cycle repeated, and when Anthony coached his girls’ basketball team before practice, he talked to the girls about God and life. Anthony poured into the girls everything Timothy Thompson had taught him in high school, sprinkled with his own experience.