INDIANAPOLIS – Johnny Furphy is pulling on a pair of plastic gloves. Well, he’s trying. These are clear, surgical-looking gloves, the kind you see workers wearing at a school cafeteria – one-size-fits-all, you know? – but Johnny Furphy doesn’t quite represent the all. He stands 6-8, a young wing for the Indiana Pacers, and he’s at Brookside School 54 for a holiday party where the Pacers are serving pizza and providing presents.
The gloves aren’t fitting, but Furphy didn’t come to the near eastside, to this IPS elementary school, to do nothing. He goes to the front of the food line, grabs a pair of gloves and pulls and tugs until his hands are protected and he can serve pizza. Tiny kids are walking up to him with paper plates, looking way up there at Johnny Furphy, who smiles down gently and hands them a piece of pepperoni.
Out in the cafeteria, surrounded by tables and kids and families, Tony Bradley is posing for pictures. If it happens once it happens a million times, little kids walking up to the Pacers’ 6-10 center and blurting:
“You’re tall!”
Yeah, well, two can play at that game. Now Brookside fifth-grader Elijah Davis is walking up to Bradley for a picture – after Bradley has given a high-five to Elijah’s younger sister, Harmony – and Elijah’s shouting, “You’re tall!”
So there’s Tony Bradley, sizing up Elijah – who stands well over 5 feet, and towers above most kids in the cafeteria – and giving it back to him.
“You’re tall,” Bradley tells him. “How old are you?”
Elijah’s beaming, and quietly answering: “11.”
“Wow!” Bradley says, eyes wide.
Elijah tells his story, how he was in the Brookside gym the other day, shooting hoops during P.E. class, when one of the school’s basketball coaches asked him to come out for the team.
“I said, ‘Oh yeah!’” Elijah is practically shouting.
Off to the side, Hannah Esparza is watching her children have this moment with an actual NBA player, and she’s getting emotional. Elijah and Harmony are her children. She’s holding two presents in her arms, silently thanking God for Brookside Elementary, and for the Indiana Pacers.
Indiana Pacers, presents, pizza: It’s IPS magic!
The kids don’t know how the magic happens. They don’t even know to ask. They just know, hundreds of them, that the Pacers and pizza and presents will be there, so they’ve filled the cafeteria with giggles and parents and laughter and younger siblings.
Off to the side, wearing the most festive Pacers Christmas sweater ever, is Dorla Williams. The kids know her as Ms. Williams, but they probably don’t know she’s a 1976 graduate of George Washington High, and they definitely don’t know what she actually does at the school. They don’t even know to ask!
But Ms. Williams is the school’s Family and Community Engagement (FACE) Liaison, which essentially means she’s the face of the school – the Brookside liaison – for the surrounding community. Among her jobs is connecting school families with available resources, and finding partners for events like this one.
Ms. Williams is busy, now. She coordinates the school’s food pantry, open to Brookside families every third Friday of the month and to the community at large every other Saturday, and oversees events like Brookside’s Thanksgiving giveaway of 120 turkeys – and side dishes – to local families. The other day, she had the folks at Samaritan’s Feet at the school donating a pair of shoes to every kid in a student body of about 370.
“If it wasn’t for Pacers Sports & Entertainment, the Fever, Anthem – all our partners – our kids wouldn’t have this,” Williams says, then asks me a question. “Did you see the presents?”
Yes!
Down the hall, in the Brookside gym, folks in blue Anthem T-shirts have set up five large round tables covered with wrapped presents. Each table has 100 presents – 99 wrapped and one unwrapped, so the parents can see what’s inside – and families are coming through, grabbing a present for each of their Brookside kids.
As the event rolls on, it becomes apparent: The presents, procured by the Pacers through the franchise’s own community partners, skew toward girls. Lots of gifts from the movie “Wish,” with princess dolls and magic wands, and the girls want them but the boys are … well, you know boys. Most of them aren’t into dolls.
That explains what I’d seen earlier in the cafeteria, a young mom sitting with her two children – a boy and a girl – watching her girl play with two dolls while her son, no presents nearby, satisfied himself with pizza. Everyone’s smiling, but the night isn’t perfect.
Not yet.
‘Without this, we’d have no presents’
Back in the cafeteria, Hannah Esparza’s daughter is walking circles around Tony Bradley. Harmony is holding her high-fived hand aloft, telling anyone who’ll listen: “I’m never washing this hand again.”
Esparza is talking with me about the party and the pizza and the presents, and I’m trying to be delicate as I ask her what the event means to her and her children.
“I’m not saying you need this to give your kids presents,” I tell Esparza, “but what does this night do for your family?”
Esparza tells her story.
“We do need it,” she says. “We need all the help we can get. Without this, we’d have no presents for Christmas.”
None?
“Not without the school,” she says. “This is probably the best school we’ve ever been to. They help you. They had another toy giveaway, so we have presents from that too. I’m home for the kids, and I do odds-and-ends. We have enough to pay the bills, but that’s it.
”Our only presents will be from the school.”
Later in the evening I find Tony Bradley near the pizza line, posing for more pictures. I ask him if he remembers the tall kid.
“Of course,” says Bradley. “Reminds me of me at that age, long legs and big feet. You can spot kids who are going to grow.”
Bradley is a father of two young children – he gets it – which is why I’m now telling him what their mom had told me. How the school is providing the family’s only presents this year. Then I tell Bradley what Dorla Williams had said a few minutes ago, how “probably half of our families” get their only presents from Brookside, and from Brookside partners like Anthem and the Pacers.
Bradley is wincing.
“That’s so tough,” he says. “I’m so glad we’re here tonight.”
So are the kids, but to be honest, here in the cafeteria the girls seem happier than the boys. I head back to the gym – to the toy room – and something’s changed. Now the tables are covered with wiffle balls and bats, Hot Wheels cars and Monopoly and Connect 4, Slinkies and “Monster Jam” trucks.
Remember the boy from earlier, eating pizza while his sister played with dolls? He’s here, getting a box with two miniature cars from an Anthem worker in her blue T-shirt. I’m asking her: “Who did this?”
“We did!” she answers. “Well, Anthem did.”
Let me get this straight, I’m saying to her. You left here and went out to a toy store and…
She cuts me off.
“Well! There weren’t any toys for the boys!”
Tony Bradley should see this. He’d say it again, I just know it:
“I’m so glad we’re here tonight.”
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Threads, or on BlueSky and Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar, or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar. Subscribe to the free weekly Doyel on Demand newsletter.