Archdeacon: ‘Painful, but necessary’ -- Grants lead second Town Hall Spotlight on mental health

The pressing question for the Flyers coach and his wife Chris was whether they should help orchestrate another Town Hall Spotlight event to go with the marquee exhibition game against old foe Xavier at UD Arena as a way of both honoring their late daughter Jayda, who took her own life almost 2 ½ years ago, and championing adolescent and young adult mental health and suicide prevention.

This year’s October 20th exhibition — like last year’s preseason match-up with Ohio State — is the high-profile event that draws attention and raises money.

And that concept has spread to other college programs of note. With the same purposes in mind, Cincinnati will host Ohio State on Oct. 18 and seven days later Kansas travels to Arkansas for a similar exhibition.

As was proved in last year’s inaugural “Spotlight to Shine a Light on Mental Health Town Hall,” the session is a far more personal — and draining — experience for the Grants.

Although it gave purpose to their pain, it was not easy, Grant said as he sat next to Chris in his Cronin Center office this week: “We had been considering what we wanted to do this year. We wondered if was well-enough received last year to do it again.”

The answer became clear once they considered several factors.

“Since the event last year, I had friends from out of state and moms here locally reach out to me, just to share that they were going through similar struggles with their children,” Chris said.

“I got the impression they just wanted to connect and share and maybe get some ideas on where they should go to get additional support for their children.”

Anthony added: “And there are the times you might get an email that just says ‘Thank you.’ Or you hear a story like the one of the young lady we had on the program last year.”

With a faint smile, Chris nodded: “Charlie Pope. A lot of her struggles were similar to our daughter’s.”

Charlie was diagnosed with depression seven years ago and her mental health crisis deepened two years ago when she was a sophomore at Greenville High School.

She lost interest in her favorite pursuits and began to isolate herself. When she voiced suicidal thoughts, her mother brought her to Dayton Children’s Hospital where she not only got proper medication, but also learned to overcome the stigma that too often comes with mental health concerns.

She eventually became a teen spokesperson for Dayton Children’s and in the summer of 2023, she travelled to Washington, D.C. to speak to lawmakers on behalf of the 2,000 children who were treated for behavioral health issues at the hospital the year prior.

“She’s doing well and is graduating this year,” Chris said. “That in itself is gratifying.”

It underscores an outcome the Grants want people in need to hear about and that was another reason to continue the Town Hall.

“It’s not easy for us,” Anthony said quietly. “It’s exhausting to share something so personal, so painful, but it’s necessary.”

This year’s event — which is free to the public — will be this Wednesday at UD Arena. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. and the 90-minute program begins at 7.

Like last year, following the keynote speaker — this year it’s Gloria Umanah, a dynamic “spoken word artist” from Atlanta — there will be a roundtable discussion that includes the Grants and mental health experts from across the Miami Valley.

The moderator will be Brandon Saho, a former Cincinnati sportscaster, who battled depression since he was a teen and now is the host of The Mental Game podcast which he does with athletes, musicians and entertainers to help break the stigma of mental health issues.

The Town Hall will also include a mental health fair in the Arena concourse featuring booths of various help agencies. And UD basketball players will be on hand for a meet-and-greet session to help promote awareness of the issues.

“Last year our players and those from Ohio State won some type of award for the Public Service Announcements they did about mental health,” Anthony said.

But the headliner of the night is Umanah, who nearly lost her life to suicide at age 16, and since then has partnered with organizations around the world to tell powerful stories of hope and redemption.

“A friend of ours from Atlanta had worked with her before and mentioned her to us,” Anthony said. “I’d never heard of her before, but that night we looked her up on the internet and heard her story. All we could say after that was ‘Wow!’

“We reached out to her in Nigeria. Her parents moved back there, and she was there on sabbatical. We had a Zoom with her and afterward we said to each other, ‘Yeah, she’s the one!’

“We felt she has a lot that people need to hear.”

The need to reduce the stigma

Jayda, or Jay as her family called her, was the gem of the Grant family that also includes three sons: A.J., Preston and Makia, a walk-on sophomore guard on the Flyers basketball team.

After starring in track as a freshman and sophomore at her Oklahoma high school when her dad was an assistant with the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder, and then doing the same her last two years at Chaminade Julienne, she joined the UD track team as a sprinter.

Then came the “perfect storm” — as her dad once explained it — for a downward spiral.

She tore her ACL and was redshirted the first part of her freshman year. The isolation of the COVID shutdown followed as did some other personal traumas her parents noted without specifying.

In the process, her mental wellness suffered.

After an unsuccessful attempt a few months earlier that left her hospitalized, she took her life on May 30, 2022.

“We tried to get her help in a variety of different ways, but we didn’t really know where to go or what to say,” Anthony said. “If we knew then what we know now, there’s probably some things we would have done differently.

“When someone has diabetes or cancer you know where to go for help. But so many of us don’t understand how to help people when they say ‘I’m depressed. I’m paralyzed by anxiety’ or whatever it may be that makes them feel like they don’t want to be here anymore.

“We say things like ‘Think better thoughts,’ but it’s not that easy.

“You need to be directed to the people who can really help. People who can tell you what to say. The biggest thing is just being able to have a conversation. To talk about something that’s been kind of taboo in our society. You need to reduce the stigma.”

He said it wasn’t until after the fact that they learned the magnitude of the problem for young people.

“The number two cause of death for young people 15 to 21 is suicide,” he said. “For us, that (statistic) hit us in our home

“It doesn’t discriminate by race, sex or age. It affects everybody from elementary school children to senior citizens. In fact, the largest demographic that dies by suicide is middle-aged white men.”

According to the Department of Health, five Ohioans a day die by suicide. While many people who take their lives have had ongoing battles with mental wellness, the decision can be immediate during an unexpected crisis.

Anthony shared the story of a 17-year-old senior at Streetsboro High in Northeast Ohio who was a member of the cross-country team. The victim of sextortion, he died by suicide and since then his parents have spoken out in hopes of keeping it from happening to others.

“He thought he had been messaging a girl,” Anthony said. “She asked him to send explicit pictures, and he finally did.

“Immediately, someone reached out and said if you don’t send us this amount of money, we’re going to expose you.

“In less than eight minutes he made his decision…”

“He had no prior history of mental health issues,” Chris said.

“You just don’t know what kids are going through,” Anthony said. “We thought of bringing his parents in to share the story. It’s very painful, but it’s something people need to know.”

It was the same last year when the keynote speakers were Mark and Kym Hilinski, whose son Tyler, a quarterback at Washington State University, died by suicide in 2018.

Their story, like the one of the Grant’s, moved the audience the most last year.

Jayda’s death devasted her family and rocked not only the UD fanbase – she and her beaming smile were a regular at Flyers games – but the Dayton campus and much of the college basketball world, where Anthony is one of the most respected coaches in the game.

Because of that reputation and his platform, he realized he and Chris might be able to help draw attention to issues of mental health in young people.

They launched Jay’s Light (jayslight.org) which is a mental health and suicide prevention initiative. Among other things, it directs you to places you can get help, and it also collects donations to fund some of those efforts.

The tandem Townhall Spotlight and exhibition game are hosted and promoted by the University of Dayton and CareSource. It’s the latter’s nationwide connections that paved the way for this year’s games at UC and Arkansas.

“When the said they wanted to take it to other markets, my only ask of CareSource was that they focused on mental health,” Anthony said. “That needs to be at the forefront of what we do.”

Spreading the message nationwide

Anthony told of hearing Tony Dungy – the former NFL player, longtime NFL coach, broadcaster and evangelical Christian – speak about his late son James, who died by suicide in 2005. He was just 17:

“He said if God would have said to him, ‘I can help some people see differently and save some lives and heal some relationships, but I’m going to have to take your child to do it,’ he would have said, ‘No!’ “But then if you look at it from a faith standpoint – and it’s hard to find God in something like this from a personal standpoint – you know the Bible tells us ‘God’s glory never comes back empty (Isaiah 55:11)’”

For the Grants, that’s meant becoming deeply involved in the mental health fight for young people.

UD held one of its first basketball media sessions this week and Anthony had spent the first few minutes talking about the upcoming Town Hall when a TV reporter changed direction and asked him about the importance of longtime foe Xavier finally returning to UD Arena.

“Certainly, I’m very appreciative of Xavier and Sean (Musketeers’ coach Sean Miller) coming to Dayton to play us,” he said. “I’m very familiar with the rivalry and think it will be great for both teams, but for me personally it’s more about getting the message out to our fan base about what we’re both doing for a good cause.”

He admitted his special regard for Miller:

“Sean was kind enough to say, ‘We’d be honored to partner with you up in Dayton.’”

He got the same embrace from Chris Holtmann, who brought his Ohio State team in for last year’s exhibition game.

Anthony praised UC coach Wes Miller for jumping on board and he’s good friends with Kansas head coach Bill Self.

As for future efforts, Anthony said: “We hope to get the word spread throughout the county; and here locally we want to continue doing it on a yearly basis.”

The other day when Chris and Anthony spoke to me, they did so from a corner of his office where the backdrop was a massive photo of sold-out UD Arena that hung on the wall. Next to it was the big silver trophy the 29-2 Flyers had won as the unbeaten Atlantic 10 regular season champs in 2019-20.

The net they’d cut down after that final A-10 victory over George Washington at UD Arena was draped around the top of the trophy.

Anthony made no mention of the triumphant totems behind him. Instead, he pointed out a homemade calendar that hung above his desk across the room.

It was made by the student artists of the GEM Project Dayton whose current focus is to curb teen suicide in the area through peer-to-peer education and support.

He walked over, took the calendar down and thumbed through the pages.

“Look at some of this work. It’s all done by students,” he said with quiet admiration.

The work will be displayed in the concourse and up on the Arena’s jumbo screen scoreboard during the Town Hall.

“I just hope people will come Wednesday night and hear the stories and see the wealth of support in the community,” Chris said. “If someone needs a hand, my hope is that they’ll come and find the help and support and encouragement they need.

“And Gloria Umanah has a powerful story to tell. I think that will resonate with people.”

Anthony nodded in agreement:

“If something she says, or something anyone else says, can make a difference for just one person, then the whole thing has been a success.”