Anthony Parker, now the head basketball and football coach at West Carrollton High School, said he met the first youngster six years ago at one of the first summer league basketball practices he ran after taking over the Pirates’ program:
“One of my young men said, ‘Coach, I can’t come to practice today because I have to take care of my younger brother.’
“I said, ‘Just bring him along with you.’
“And while the guys were working out, I talked to the young boy – he might have been 10 – and asked him what he’d like to be when he grew up.
“He said, ‘I’d like to play in the NBA!’
“I said, ‘That’s phenomenal, but if that doesn’t work, what else could you do?’
“He said, ‘I’d like to play in the NFL’ and I said, ‘Wouldn’t we all. But if that doesn’t work, what else could you do?’
“He stopped dribbling his basketball, put his head down and finally said, ‘Well, I guess I could sell drugs.’
“That hit me hard. It really affected me. I kept thinking, ‘A young black boy feels his only three options in life are pro football, pro basketball or selling drugs.’”
Parker said he went home and told his wife, Jameka: “Have things gotten that bad with this generation that there’s nothing else to look up to? There’s got to be something else, something more. We’ve got to do something.’”
He mulled it over a couple of days and subconsciously he must have been hearing his grandfather’s words.
“When I was growing up, he always told me, ‘If you’re going to complain about something, you’re either going to be part of the problem or part of the solution. Instead of complaining about your community or your environment, make a difference yourself.’
“And after about three days, I woke up one morning and told my wife: ‘You know what? I’m gonna start a mentor group.’
“She said, ‘OK, but how we going to do it?’
“I didn’t know how or what to do, but I knew it needed to be done.”
Fast forward to Thursday afternoon for the second little boy story.
Parker’s sixth annual, eight-week long summer camp for boys ages 5 to 15 — and for the past two years, girls, too — had begun just three days earlier. It’s part of the non-profit organization — Extraordinary Men Mentoring Group — he founded with Jameka’s help.
That first camp six years ago drew 32 boys. This year there are 204 registered youth, many considered at-risk, and just over half consistently take part.
The Parkers’ three children — 17-year-old daughter Tiyah, the point guard of the Chaminade Julienne girls’ basketball team; 19-year-old Jaya, a Stivers High grad who now plays volleyball at Northern Kentucky University; and 24-year-old son Anthony Jr., a Bowling Green grad who played football for the Falcons and now is a counselor at West Carrollton Middle School and an assistant football and basketball coach at West Carrollton High — all help out at the camp.
So does West Carrollton assistant Darren Byrd, who first coached Parker when he was a star quarterback at Jefferson in the mid-1990s.
The camp — whose home base is on the nearly three acres that surround the Parkers’ home in Trotwood — runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. five days a week and provides each camper with a daily breakfast and lunch.
Thursday’s activities included everything from the littlest children working puzzles with Jameka; to the boys taking part in a community bike ride to a nearby park with Parker and his son; to Jaya teaching kids to swim in the pool behind the house.
There also had been sessions for the girls that stressed affirmation and being proud of who you are, Jaya said:
“It’s about realizing: ‘I am smart. I am resilient. I am beautiful. I am meant to be in this space.’ Repeating that every day enforces it and helps them blossom.”
Girls and boys work on conflict resolution and widening their vision of the future, a point Parker has underscored in past camps by bringing in guests like Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Gerald Parker, who involved the kids in a mock trial; jazz musician Deron Bell, who let the campers try various instruments; and the Muse Machine, who included five campers in its The Little Mermaid production.
But during Thursday’s bike ride some of the social miscues that often knock kids off course had come up.
One young boy had been calling others an especially derogatory name. Another had been something of a bully to younger kids and a few — anxious to ride and have fun — had not followed instructions.
Parker gathered all the kids together on the driveway at the end of the day and had a heartfelt talk with them.
The kid who bullied others was called up front and asked why he’d done what he’d done. He hung his head sheepishly and said nothing.
“Accountability is not an attack, it’s part of being a man and owning up to your actions,” Parker said as he patted the boy on the back before returning him to the group, the teachable moment now over.
The group talked about better ways to handle conflict and about the hurt that comes from demeaning names.
Then Parker asked one of the smallest campers — 7-year-old Mason Kimble, a soon-to-be second grader at Richard Allen School who was wearing a white T-shirt with a green crocodile on the front and was missing most of his front baby teeth — to come forward and tell everyone the Extraordinary Men’s motto.
“My life…My pain…My story,” Mason said quietly.
“And what does that mean?’ Parker asked.
“You’re the narrator of your own story,” said 14-year-old Brandon Carter, who’ll be a freshman at DECA in the fall. “Your circumstances don’t dictate your success.”
This is a theme Parker brings up over and over:
“We’re really trying to change the narrative of what it means to be a young black male in Dayton, Ohio.
“We don’t want them to be someone who views themselves as a victim. We want them to know ‘Regardless of where I come from, I can still be successful.’
“It’s about empowerment”
Parker’s efforts have been recognized nationwide.
This year he received a Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award from President Joe Biden and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Humanitarianism by the South Carolina-based School of Great Commission Bible College for his many years of Good Samaritan work involving the youth of the Miami Valley.
In 2023, the Dayton chapter of the NAACP gave him its Hall of Freedom Award for his efforts in youth development and, in 2021, he was named one of Dayton’s Top 10 African American Males of the Year by Parity Inc., which has fought for diversity and equality in the Dayton area for the past 30 years.
There have been several other honors, but nothing was quite as rewarding as what happened right after that first summer camp.
“That first year we had 32 kids and the school year before we got them they’d received a combined 45 suspensions,” he said. “After our camp, we followed up on them at their schools the next year. And their suspensions went down to zero.
“There wasn’t a single suspension!
“Kids don’t always tell you they’re listening or plan to use what you showed them, but to see those lessons applied like that, it was a real feel-good moment.”
A family of ‘givers’
Parker was a multisport athlete at Jefferson, but was best known for his football, He was the Broncos’ quarterback and his prime target was Lavar Glover, who, following his career at the University of Cincinnati, would play in the NFL, the Canadian Football League and in the Arena League.
After spending two years at UC, Parker played arena football as well and eventually worked for Montgomery County Juvenile Corrections.
Jameka Walder went to Trotwood-Madison and met Anthony her freshman year in college.
“We’ve been together since we were 18, so we basically grew up together,” she said. “One reason I liked him was because of his heart. His grandparents were givers, his parents were givers, and he was, too.”
Jameka is a preschool teacher and has her own consulting business which focuses on children with autism. She and Anthony now run the Blessed Beginnings daycare and before that he ran a group home for at-risk youth.
Parker spent nine years as an assistant basketball coach at Trotwood-Madison and five years as a Rams football assistant.
He credits Trotwood’s varsity basketball coach Rocky Rockhold and football coaches Mo Douglass and Jeff Graham with helping mold him as a coach. He also gave a nod to his current assistant coach, Byrd.
Parker, who is also the academic advisor for all West Carrollton athletes, is one of the few head coaches in the area who leads the varsity programs in two different sports at their school.
After his first three basketball seasons at West Carrollton were winners, Parker was asked to take over the Pirates moribund football program, which had lost 21 straight games.
His first team last season took an initial step in the right direction and won two of its last four games.
Parker’s schedule is especially full now that his kids camp opened last Monday. He also has West Carrollton football drills running two hours each morning and again for two hours in the late afternoon. And his summer basketball program runs from 6 to 8 p.m.
Most of the rest of his waking hours are spent with his youth camp.
Parents who can afford it pay $100 a week for their kids to attend. That gets their children 35 hours of activities and mentoring a week, 10 meals and lifelong lessons. Families that can’t afford the fee aren’t charged.
“We don’t turn kids away,” he said.
Parker said the camp gets no city, county, or state funds and has no major sponsor. (To make a donation or find out more, visit the Extraordinary Men Mentoring website: em2g.org )
One person Parker did want to salute was area referee Ray Bradshaw, whose sizeable donation sponsors five youngsters for the entire summer.
“I think that’s pretty awesome,” Parker said. “He sees the good that is happening here”
‘We’re going to help them succeed’
When her husband started the camp, Jameka said he wanted it to be like “an Old School summer. He wanted it outdoors.”
During the eight-week session, kids are not permitted to use their cell phones or tablets or any gaming device.
“This camp is real good for kids because it teaches them a social aspect,” Byrd said. “A lot of them play those electronic games and really don’t get outdoors that much.”
Parker agreed: “So many young men in our community struggle with obesity. So, each morning after our words of affirmation, we have 30 minutes of exercise.”
His daughter Jaya often leads those sessions. That’s in addition to a daily workout regimen — often with fellow youth counselor, Tylen Rose, a football standout at Northmont who now plays at Muskingum University — she follows to prep for the coming NKU volleyball season.
While the camp tends to many of the kids’ physical, mental and emotional needs, Parker noticed one reaction that puzzled him early on.
“A lot of young men, when they first come in here, the first two weeks, they’ve very positive and attentive,” he said. “They’re really excited about building a relationship.
“But then, on short notice, right around week three, four or five — when everyone seemed to be taking a liking to me or my son or some other mentor — they began to self-sabotage and hurt those relationships.
“It took me a little time to figure out what was going on. After talking to parents, I finally recognized what was transpiring.
“We found out many of the men in the boys’ lives had abandon them. And they were afraid of attaching themselves to one more man who they subsequently felt would disappoint them by leaving. So, they’d self-sabotage to avoid that hurt again.
“So we began to try to reassure them that we’re not going anywhere. That we’re going to be right here with them every day. And we’re going to love them and support them and at the same time stress self-respect and hold them accountable. We’re going to help them succeed.”
Those were some of the lessons being imparted on that driveway gathering late Thursday afternoon.
Similar things were going on with the little kids who had been putting puzzles together on the front porch.
“OK, we have to put all this together now and clean things up,” Jameka said.” We’ll do some more things tomorrow.”
The little campers — like their bigger counterparts —– seemed to look forward to that.
They knew the motto: “My life…My pain…My story.”
They knew they had more of a narrative to write.
About the Author