From life’s potholes to a full ride to Tulane:
A Tribute to Mentoring

By R. Kay Miller

Without mentors, Anthony Norris says he wouldn’t be where he is today – 41, but feeling like 20, a regular attendee at Narcotics Anonymous meetings and embarking on a four-year scholarship to Tulane University.

It’s why, speaking during his KVCC commencement in May, he implored the audience to become mentors.

“Because I had people believing in me, helping me and supporting me, I could do what I did,” he said. “Mentors show you how, like a teacher demonstrates a math exercise, but then you have to do your own work.”

Norris knows. Out of crisis, his life’s purpose unfolded. But it was not without dedicated participation from social workers, family, teachers, counselors, and, most importantly, himself.

He’s been in recovery for alcohol and drug addiction for more than three years. He reunited with his family in Kalamazoo after years of isolation and dealt with depression that began to surface as far back as high school at Portage Northern.

He graduated from the KVCC Honors Program with an associate degree in social work, and was a near-unanimous selection by KVCC faculty to present the student address at commencement.

He said his degree belongs to his mentors as much as it does to him. “I don’t consider myself the only success story. People who mentor become great and unforgettable by sharing their knowledge. I call it hope eternal,” which is his term for mentoring where everyone collaborates and everyone benefits.

If Norris sounds like he’s preaching, it’s from the pulpit of life. Everyone has a journey, he said, and all the points in his life where he might otherwise find regret, he said he has none.

They were “pieces of a puzzle that started to fit,” and his formal education, he said, was a big piece missing on his road back from destruction.

But before it fit together, Norris suffered a drug-induced psychotic episode in Atlanta, where he had been living and working in the food-service industry for 10 years.

He called an ambulance from a drug store during a hallucination. He declared he wanted help for his drug abuse, but had to contact his youngest sister, Angela, who was also living in Atlanta and with whom he hadn’t spoken in years, to transport him from the hospital to the rehabilitation center.

Confronting himself, allowing the assistance of two social workers, and following the 12 steps of NA, “two times a day at first,” he said, helped rebuild his life.

Initially he blamed everyone, but as his social workers showed they understood his feelings and patterns of behavior, he began to trust them – and himself. He understood his situation was self-inflicted, but had to accept being part of the solution.

“Then I realized I could shape my own destiny—that was the greatest epiphany I had,” Norris said.

He lives this perspective passionately now. Looking back, he said, he hadn’t. He fled home after high school and completed one trimester at DeVry Institute in Ohio before joining the Air Force for 10 years.

He was “emotionally immature,” he said, but despite using alcohol as a socially acceptable de-stressor and setting himself up for his “fall” in Atlanta, the military experience did broaden his view of how he fit in life. “I realized I had other issues,” he said.

Norris’ parents moved to Portage with their four children in the late 1970s. After transferring into Portage Northern from Loy Norrix, Norris said he encountered prejudice against African-Americans that was bigger than his ability to cope with it. 

An introvert, he said not coping well with such issues was of his own making. “I was running away from myself.”

NA advocates “no man is an island,” he said, and he learned to accept “the Anthony Norris who had to do everything by himself and know everything.” He learned to confront his feelings and that his family hadn’t abandoned him, but he turned his back on them.

Norris said he’s faced tough moments, but has applied what he’s learned, like calling his parents asking to come home. 

Norris continued to accept assistance from a counselor at the Michigan Rehabilitation Service who convinced him that college was a possibility. Once in classes at KVCC, he said “it became easier to focus.”

Norris was doing well in abnormal psychology when instructor Elaine Louisell recommended him for the Honors Program.

He took part in “The Urban Plunge” in which students spend a weekend in homeless shelters in Chicago. That helped solidify an interest in social work.

He also experienced mentoring from the giving side as a volunteer in KVCC’s “Brother2Brother,” a one-on-one program supported by the Kalamazoo Community Foundation to assist African-American men in earning a degree.

His biggest goal — besides living his life — is to help someone else. He’ll study organizational psychology and computer science at Tulane so he can create systems to make it easier for social workers to do their jobs.

“When I look back on my life, I want it to be measured by how many people I’ve tried to help,” he said. That’s a purposeful life he thinks he can handle now.  “I’m not running from something this time – I’m running toward something.”            CS

Update:

Anthony Norris was able to evacuate from New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina laid waste to “The Big Easy.”

With Tulane University out of business and his graduate studies on hold, Norris seemed locked in his Atlanta refuge.

But, because of a KVCC initiative, Norris has been admitted to Kalamazoo College, with all of his costs waived except for textbooks.