His GQ look was complemented by one of his trademark bowties, monogrammed shirt cuffs, gold cuff links, shiny black shoes, size 15 wide, a megawatt smile and that deep James Earl Jones voice.
It used to be when Todd walked around West Dayton, where he grew up on Larchmont Drive, people there, especially old folks, assumed he was a well-dressed preacher.
And that’s what happened that day in the post office.
“A lady came up and patted me on the back and said, ‘Reverend, that was a great sermon you preached Sunday,’” Todd once told me with a smile that broke into a booming laugh.
“I wanted to be respectful, so I just said ‘Thank you Ma’am.’”
All these years later, many things have changed for him and yet some are still the same.
He actually is a preacher now. Four years ago he became an ordained elder in the Full Baptist Gospel Church Fellowship International.
But the gospel he’s spreading that is really resonating this Easter Sunday isn’t from Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. It comes from Ohio governor Mike DeWine, state medical director Dr. Amy Acton and lieutenant governor Jon Husted, the former University of Dayton football player.
The 52-year-old Todd serves as DeWine’s Minority Affairs Liaison. He’s the governor’s point person when it comes to minority business development, faith-based initiatives and government access. He calls himself a “bridge” to the governor.
And over the past six weeks that bridge has been filled to capacity with all things related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The coronavirus is infecting and killing black people in the United State – Latinos, too – at disproportionately high rates.
According to Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot, African Americans have accounted for 72 percent of the COVID-19 related deaths in her city even though they make up less than one-third of the population.
In Louisiana, 70 percent of the people who died from COVID-19 are black while only one third of the population is black and in Milwaukee blacks accounted for 80 percent of the deaths, but just 20 percent of the population. The numbers were starling in Michigan, North Carolina and other places, too.
“Back people appear to be dying at an alarmingly high rate,” U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said at the White House press briefing the other day. “We must work together to change that.”
Experts say the reasons are many:
People of color have less access to proper heath care and neighborhood grocery stores that help them eat healthier.They are at higher risk to suffer from diabetes, high blood pressure and asthma, are less likely to be insured and they hold many of the jobs – in food service, public transportation and health care – that don’t allow them to stay at home.
“This crisis is shining a bright light on how unacceptable these disparities are,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the primary medical spokesman at the daily White House briefings.
Ohio’s COVID-19 numbers have been better than in many states and that the includes with African Americans who make up 20 percent of the cases and 12 percent of the population.
Much of that has to do with the leadership of DeWine and Acton.
Across the nation the Republican party often has difficulty attracting a following of people of color, but when it comes to DeWine’s COVID-19 response, as Todd noted, “this is not about politics, it’s about helping everyone. It’s about life and death.”
Todd said he’s contacted “every influential leader in the state of Ohio who represents the African American comminity.”
He’s been in touch with other minorities as well, from the Latino population to just the other day when he spoke to me between his conference calls to “representatives of Asia/Pacific countries” and “members of the African immigrant community.”
He said over a month ago his first goal was “to convince everybody this is real. We had to overcome some of the myths out there.”
After that have come more specific questions, everything from why church services should not be held in person to who small business owners contact about loans.
“In a way, some things haven’t changed for me,” he said. “When I was a sports agent (representing mostly small college football players) people didn’t know about my guys. I had to sell them on how good my guys were. Now I’m selling people on the governor’s message and how it will keep them safe.”
Trading briefcase for shoulder pads
Todd’s mother, Shirley, ran the coffee shop at the downtown Elder Beerman store for 23 years.
He once told me how, when he was 15, she bought him a briefcase.
After that he said he’d walk the streets downtown, briefcase in hand – though it was usually empty except for maybe a newspaper – and look up at the towering buildings and dream of one day having an office in one of them.
Bussed to Belmont High, he traded the briefcase for shoulder pads and a helmet and began a football career that got him to Bowling Green and almost to the University of Dayton, although he said his transfer plans “didn’t work out.”
At the time Husted was a standout cornerback and kick returner for the Flyers and Todd became friends with him.
Up to them Todd’s only brush with politics came when he was 16 and his dad took him to hear Jesse Jackson speak at Shiloh Baptist Church. Although he was a third generation Republican, Todd was so enthused he passed out Jackson leaflets afterwards.
In 1992, he was back in the Republican fold, joining Husted on the campaign of Pete Davis when he ran for Congress against Tony Hall.
Davis lost and soon after Todd became a sports agent, eventually teaming up with late attorney Dwight Washington and Gerald Bayless. A year later they guided Central State's Hugh Douglas, an NAIA All American, into the first round of the NFL draft when the New York Jets made him the 16th pick overall.
Todd then went on his own, though he was the homespun opposite of big-time agents like Leigh Steinberg.
His first office was on the attic of his parents’ home and with no car he either had to borrow his sister’s vehicle or take the RTA No. 3 bus downtown.
He let nothing deter him and found his niche in players who had been overlooked, many of them from small college programs including Central State and the University of Dayton.
Some made the NFL, others played in the Canadian league, NFL Europe, Arena football and he even had a pro baseball player.
“I counted up 55 contracts I negotiated,” Todd said.
In 2009 he married his wife Janice and now has a 31-year-old stepdaughter. Kendall Curtis. He moved to Cincinnati, founded an insurance brokerage business and ran a consulting firm in Dayton.
After Husted became Ohio’s Secretary of State in 2010, he hired Todd as a minority affairs consultant. And when Husted joined DeWine, Todd was brought on board, as well.
Todd embraced his new job so enthusiastically that he admits he once announced at a meeting that there still was some football player left in him.
“As an offensive lineman I’ve always been the quarterback’s protector,” he said. “I told them ‘I’ve got the backs of the governor and lieutenant governor. You’ll have to go through me to get to them.’ They all started laughing, but it’s the truth.
“Being a lineman, you know you’re going to be knocked in the mouth. But you also know you’re going to get up and do it again. You don’t take things personally, but you take your job to heart.”
Team player
Todd said several lessons from sports apply now, especially the concept of being part of a team.
“Through sports I’ve also learned to interact with all kinds of people,” he said. “Going all the way back to Belmont, we had poor black kids and Appalachian kids. You learn to get along.”
As an agent of overlooked talent he learned persistence. His players never were invited to the NFL Combine in Indianapolis, but he’d bring them to the annual showcase anyway. They’d set up in the lobby of the convention center or hotel where the NFL coaches were staying and he’d introduce his guys to everybody who walked past.
Sometimes that cracked a door open just enough that the player got a tryout.
While he shows similar persistence on the job now, Todd admits some things have changed with him over the years.
Remember how back in those teenage days he used to walk around downtown Dayton with that empty briefcase and the dream of an office in one of the buildings towering over him?
Well, now he does have a third floor office in Columbus, but he said he rarely uses it.
“That office means nothing to me now,” he said. “I’m always on the go. I’m out on the street meeting people in places like East Cleveland, inner city Youngstown, Toledo, Dayton, Cincinnati. I’ve got to be on the street where the people are. That’s where I do my job.”
After all, a bridge needs a street to get people where they need to be.
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