IN MEMORIAM
SELLING THE CONTRIBUTOR ANTHONY GUNTER Published in 2019 Selling the paper is fun to me. I am amazed at the people I meet. I face 70 percent rejection, but that’s OK. The 30 percent that buy make up for them anyway. I got blessed in all kinds of ways, from 100 dollar bills to honey baked ham. People give you tips for the work that we do. If you don’t think it’s work, follow me for a week back and forth downtown to reload my bag. Then I get to my spot and put on a smile. Two dollars a paper, one paper two bucks, help a vet. I have to live, too. Put the paper in the bathroom. Read it through and through. If you run out of paper, you’ve got some to use. That brings on a laugh and they think I’m a fool. They buy my paper and I smile too. If you see me on the street please come my way. I’m the pretty black man on the scooter. Hope to meet you someday.
HOLIDAYS ALONE
Contributor vendor Anthony Gunter will always be a part of the paper’s legacy
ANTHONY GUNTER
Published in December 2019 Wandering around with nowhere to go. Everywhere you look people are aglow. They walk around with a smile on their face. At night they go home because they have their own place. I’ll find me a place, maybe a heated grate. I’ll stay as long as I can until the police run me away. The mission is not an option to me. There are junkies, drunks, and there’s always some thieves. You can’t close your eyes, you are afraid to go to sleep. So you get a little rest so you can face the next day. Wandering around trying to find somewhere to stay. One day this will all be over to my heavenly father I pray. Affordable housing Nashville will have some day.
BY AMANDA HAGGARD Longtime Contributor vendor and poet Anthony Gunter died in mid-June. He would have been 60 years old in October. Until he passed away, Anthony sold The Contributor for the whole time the paper had been printing. “Anthony had an indefatigable spirit in the office and on his corner,” said Cathy Jennings, executive director for The Contributor. “His outgoing love of life carried him through his disability and hard times. Customers loved him. He chose everyday to see the positive and he loved that he could write for The Contributor and share that spirit.” When Connie Britton from the show Nashville visited The Contributor’s offices, Anthony dressed in a suit and tried throughout the encounter to deliver his best lyrics to her. He was always looking for his next big break. Volunteers at The Contributor called him “part of the legacy” of the paper and many said he would be remembered for his laugh. Anthony penned more than 100 poems for the paper in his tenure writing — his poems were often in a lyrical style and al-
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most always about romance. He would attend writers’ workshops for the paper and offer suggestions to other writers, sometimes sparking debate by bringing up hot topics. “Anthony was always interested in what we thought about his work,” said Amanda Haggard, co-editor of The Contributor. “He always came in with multiple pieces of writing to turn in and would come back with new versions when you hadn’t printed something he’d turned in.” During the pandemic, Anthony took to selling papers at one of the only places that people were still going: a grocery store. He would sell in his motorized scooter outside of the grocery store, Osborne’s Bi-Rite, on Belmont Boulevard in Nashville. In a feature The Contributor wrote for The Big Issue Japan, Anthony was interviewed. He was happy to have found a place to sell the paper successfully, but also lamented that “all his other honey holes are closed down.” At that time, he said he had been making more money than usual. He was feeling confident. He died in housing, having lived a long portion of his life on and off the streets.
