I Beat the Odds_ From Homelessness, to the Blind Side, and Beyond - Michael Oher [40]
Big Tony was a good coach and Steve had become a good friend of mine. I knew that if I stayed close to them, I'd have a better chance of making something out of myself than if I stuck with the thugs who seemed to be everywhere in my own neighborhood. So I started staying over at their house whenever I could. I just went home with Tony one day after practice and I ended up staying for a couple days. Pretty soon, I just stayed there all the time. Steve didn't seem to mind, although I think he was a little surprised at first that his dad let me stay over on a weeknight, but it soon just became a normal thing for us. They put some sheets on the sofa and that became my bed. I'd usually remember to take them off each morning so people could use the sofa during the day, and then I'd just spread them out again at night. Tony's family opened up their home to me, and even though it was only a temporary solution, what came out of it changed my life forever.
BIG TONY AND HIS MOTHER, Miss Betty, had kept after Steve and his brother, Tristan, so Steve's academic record was solid and his grades were good. Before she died, Miss Betty asked Big Tony to be sure to get his boys a Christian education. Tony wanted to make good on that promise, so he started looking around to see what Christian schools Steve might be able to attend for high school. Steve was a grade behind me, but I was determined to go wherever he went. If he was leaving Westwood, then I wanted to leave, too. The Henderson family seemed to understand the importance of going after opportunities, and I wanted to be a part of that.
The summer before my sophomore year, Big Tony got serious about finding a private school. One day in July, he loaded us up into his old Ford Taurus and we drove across town to the University of Memphis High School. I had never seen a school that looked as neat and clean as that campus. I couldn't believe that any school could look that nice. If I had known better, I probably would have felt out of place walking around in my basketball shorts and T-shirt.
Tony, it turned out, didn't call ahead for an appointment. He just rolled up to the school and walked confidently into the front office with Steve's records under one arm and mine--or what he could get of them--under the other. Steve and I waited in the hallway while he talked with someone inside. I don't remember how long we were waiting before Tony came back out and said we'd have to try somewhere else.
A day or two later we drove over to Christian Brothers High School, a huge campus off a very busy road near Baptist Hospital. It was the same routine: Tony just walked in unannounced, completely confident, and Steve and I waited for him to make his pitch to the administrators. Christian Brothers had one of the best football stadiums I had ever seen, and the school itself felt huge and clean and new. But the same thing happened: Tony came out of the office after a while and said we'd have to try somewhere else.
The next day we were off to Evangelical Christian School, which was out in Cordova, east of Memphis. For as big a city as it is, you can get just about anywhere in Memphis in roughly thirty minutes, and it's pretty much impossible to tell where Memphis ends and Cordova begins. But that drive felt like the longest one that we took. I had no idea where we were headed as we drove down some roads that looked like they were taking us out into the middle of the country. Finally, when we arrived at ECS, I relaxed a little bit because it seemed a bit smaller than the other two schools we'd visited, and it had a nice campus with some woods around it. At the time, it was also one of the powerhouses of private high school football for the state of Tennessee. But once again, after Tony left the front office, he said we'd have to find another place.
It turned out that what he was hearing over and over again was that