In Memoriam

Contributor vendor Anthony Gunter will always be a part of the paper’s legacy

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 almost 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.