Larry Dorsey Jr. (64:08)
So this was 1981, and Covenant House was in Times Square. It was for homeless teenagers. And the Times Square today is like Disney Hard Rock Cafe. It was not like that in 1981. It was the center of the pornography and prostitution district. In fact, Rolling stone magazine in 1981 called it the sleaziest block in America. And it was. So this is where I was. But I couldn't have been happier. I couldn't have been happier. And they put me on a floor at Covenant House to see with 40 homeless teenage boys. These boys were all from the poorest parts of New York City. They were all African American and Hispanic kids. They came from dysfunctional families. A lot of them had been coming out of prison. Some of them had been in many, many different foster homes. And that's where I first met Tony. Tony was from the projects in New York City. He was like a typical Covenant House kid. African American from the city, from the projects, dropped out of high school, dysfunctional family, no job skills. And I was assigned to Tony to be his counselor. And I would talk to him and I would help him look for jobs. I would talk to him about his problems. And I liked him. He had, like, a really fun personality. He was very likable. But I remember a senior counselor who had a lot more experience in me saying to me, I can see you like this guy, and I understand why he's very likable. But I have to tell you, Mark, he's involved in some very bad things out there in Times Square. So be careful. And I had no reason at all to doubt this woman. But I liked him. You would come into Covenant House, and every day there would be incident reports up anything bad that happened in the prior 24 hours, and including anybody who was banned from covenant house either 30 days or forever. So I came in one evening shift, and sure enough, there's Tony's name up on the board, and he's banned from Covenant House for life. He apparently come in the day before, blasted out of his mind on what was called angel dust, which we know today as pcp, and flipped over furniture and tore the place apart. So Tony was gone. And I felt bad because I really liked him. I thought, well, that's too bad. You know, I guess I'll never See him again. Six months later, I'm walking through Times Square. I'm on my way over to Covenant House. Times Square then had all these strip clubs. And you would hear young men out in front of those strip clubs all the time with flyers, handing out flyers. And they'd say, girls, girls, girls. Come on in and see the pretty girls, girls. You would hear this all the time. It was like background music. So I'm waiting across the street, and I hear girls, girls, girls. And somebody sticks a flyer in my chest, and I look up and who is it? But it's Tony. And he looks at me, and I look at him. He's mortified. He puts the flyers behind his back, like, hoping I didn't see see it, you know? And he's like, hey, Mark. And I'm like, hey, Tony. And he was like, how's Covenant House? How's Dudley? How's Patty? He starts naming all the different counselors, you know, And I'm like, they're good, they're good. And I just can't wait till the walk sign, you know, because it was so awkward. So, sure enough, I hear the walk sign, sign. I said, tony, take care. And he said, bye, Mark. You know, say hello to everybody at Covenant House for me. And I walked away thinking, well, I guess that's the last time I'll ever see Tony. Four years later, I'm out of Covenant House. I'm going to grad school at New York University. I'm living in Greenwich Village. I'm at a party in Greenwich Village. It was a fundraiser. It was a priest who was trying to start shelter for homeless teens in the Bronx. So I'm at this fundraiser. A lot of my Covenant House friends are there, and I hear this booming voice across the room. Anybody here know Tony Reynolds? It was a priest. It was a priest. His name was Father Jim Joyce. He was a mountain of a man. He was about 6 foot 5, 300 pounds. He was huge. And he had volunteered a couple Covenant House. So we yell, I was the buddy of mine. He knew Tony, too. We yell, yeah, we know him. So Father Jim comes lumbering over, and he said, I'm working as a chaplain at Rikers Island. And I met Tony. And he said that no one. He has no family to visit him, or his family refuses to visit him. But he used to live at Covenant House, and it would be great if somebody from Covenant House could go visit him in prison. So first of all, you got to remember, in 1981, there were 15,000 prisoners in Rikers Island. Somehow this priest meets Tony out of 15,000 and somehow comes to the same party and yells his name out. And I hear it, but it happened. Pretty incredible, but it happened. So my friend and I said to Father Jim, we'll go. We'll go this weekend. We'll go see him. So that Saturday, he and I, my buddy and I, we jump in a car, we go to Rikers. Getting into Rikers island takes hours. You got to take a bus. They fingerprint you, the dogs sniff you, they pat you down, they fingerprint you again. It takes, you know, two or three hours just to get in there. So you finally get in this big visiting room, and there's scores of these men. They're dressed in olive drab prison gear, and everybody's sitting at the table with family members. So Tony walks in, and he's got this look on his face. He's looking around like, who is here to see me? I don't think, at least then they even told the prisoner who was there. I think they said to Tony, hey, there's people out there to visit you. I don't think there's that. Hey, Mark Redmond's here. So anyway, he sees us. Oh, he's so happy. He's so happy. He comes over. Oh, I can't believe you visited me. This is great. So anyway, we're laughing and we're reminiscing about Covenant House. And I finally said, so, listen, what are you in for? So he said, well, like everybody else here, I'm in here for drugs, Dealing drugs. So I said, what's your sentence? Well, I got a sentence. They're going to ship me upstate, and I'll be going up there in a few months, few weeks, and it's a two to three year sentence. So I said, listen, here's my address, you know, and if you write to me, I'll write back to you. So anyway, he did a good two or three years, and he would write to me, and I would write back. And he got out. So he got out, he contacted me, and we got together, and we would always meet at Ray's famous pizza on 48th street and 8th Avenue. And he would always say, our prison was so bad. It was so terrible. He'd say the same thing as, I am never going back to prison. Oh, I'm going straight. Well, he would always go back to prison, you know, Then I'd get a letter, a couple of months later, I'm back. And then it'd be a different prison, you know, and so. And then he'd get out. And he'd say, oh, I'm never gonna go. And he'd go back to prison. So this went on for like 12 years. In jail, out of jail, in jail, out of jail. I wish I had kept all the letters that we exchanged. I only kept one. And this letter I have. I'm going to read a few lines. It's dated June 18, 1993, from some prison in upstate New York. I read a few lines. Hi, Mark. How are you and your lovely family doing? Mark, this letter is to let you know I will not be calling you for some time because I've been calling you too much and I know your telephone bill is going up and not down. I'm saying this to you and your family because I do care about you all, and I know you all care about me as well. You can also see I do need you and your lovely family in my life because my family is not looking out at all for me. As of right now, I'm trying real hard to correct myself before getting released from prison. This time around, I'm getting too old and too tired to keep on doing the things that lead me to prison. I must get my priorities in order. Order deciding what I value most. I've concluded that I value freedom more than anything else. I miss affection more than I miss sex. That's word. Just a note from a loved one means so much. While being in this situation, it serves as a reminder that I'm being thought about and loved by somebody. Write back soon as you're able. And please send me the Little Debbie's I asked you for. I really got a craving for some of those. Until next time, take good care of you and yours. Love always, Tony. And I would do that. I would buy Little Debbie's cupcakes and wrap them up and send them to whatever prison he was in anyway, this one for couple more years. And then finally I would say by the mid-90s, he stopped going to prison, so at least he wasn't dealing drugs. But I knew he was still using drugs. We would agree to meet. I was living in Westchester County. We would agree to meet at Ray's, and he would show up about 50% of the time. It got to the point I would call him on his phone like, tony, I'm leaving now. It's gonna take me 40 minutes. I have my son with me. Okay, we gotta find parking and then I'll meet you. Oh, yeah, Mark, I'll be there. And he wouldn't show. And I was so frustrated. I can't Tell you how many times I'd be like, that's it, I've had it. I am not taking the bait anymore. This is ridiculous. But he'd call me six months later, I would go, and he'd show up and we'd have fun, we'd catch a movie, we'd get pizza. It was fun. It was fun to be with him. But I knew he was still, he was still involved in drugs, had to be. And then he calls me in 1999, so I've known Tony like 18 years by now. And he calls me, says, hey Mark, what are you doing next Thursday night? I said, oh, I'm free, I'll see you at Ray's. You know, he goes, no, no, no, I'm gonna give you a different address. I said, why, why, Why a different address? We always go to raise. He goes, well, I haven't told you, but I've been going to Narcotics anonymous for the last two years to a 12 step meeting, and I've been clean off of drugs for two years and it's my two year anniversary and I would really love it if you could be there. So I was shocked, I was shocked. But I said, okay, great, great, you know, I'll be there. So I showed up at the address, my son went with me. I think he was about 13 at that point. And we walked in and it was a church, he met me outside. It was the basement of a church, you know, and it was smoke filled basement. You know, if people have never been to a 12 step meeting, they should really go because it's raw, it's honest, it's real. You have people like Tony who have been sober for two years and people have been sober for two days and it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, right? They're all there to support each other. So they went through all the usual 12 step rituals. And at the end of the meeting, they reserved time for anybody whose anniversary it is. So. And they get to give a speech. So it was Tony's two year anniversary, so he said a lot of things that were really good. And then at the end he said, you know, when you're dealing drugs, you always think your drug dealing friends, they're always going to be there, right with you, you know, they'll be loyal to you. You know, if you get locked up, no matter. But once you get locked up, forget it. It's out of sight, out of mind. They forget all about you. But there was one person who didn't forget about me. There was one person who Would write to me. There was one person who would call me, one person would visit me, one person who would send me Little Debbie's cupcakes. And it's that man right there. And he pointed to me. And it was a great thing. It was, especially to have my son with me, you know, it was just. It was just a great moment. So shortly after that, Tony and his partner had a baby. And, oh, she was pregnant. And he called me and said, you know, will you come to the baby shower? So I said, great. I said, give me the address. And he said, I'll give you the address, but don't get out of the car. It turned out it was one of these, like, 50 story projects, you know, where, like, I could get shot or killed. So he came down and met me at the car, and we went up in the elevator, and I got into the apartment. It was not exactly a Jack and Jill shower. It was me, Tony and about 30 women. He went around to every woman and said, this is Mark Redmond. He's my best friend. Which really touched me. So I looked at his partner and I. She was really pregnant. I looked at her, I was like, you look like you're gonna give birth tonight. Sure enough, I left the party and she went into labor. He called me the next day. He goes, yeah, between contractions. She said, your friend jinxed me. So they had a little girl. They had a baby girl. And it's really sad. His wife relapsed eventually and became addicted to drugs and died pretty young. She died of either an overdose or some drug related illness, you know, and he asked me to be the godfather for the little girl. So I went to the church, and I'm her godfather to this day. And I was very touched he asked me to do that. But, you know, he raised her as a single parent. And I went to her middle school graduation, and if I heard it once, I heard it 20 times. All the women. All the women that kept saying to me, tony's a good father. Tony's a good father. I heard it over and over again, you know, which is really. It's hard to think of a better compliment. Then I got married. I got remarried. Tony came to the wedding. He brought a gift. I always joke, there are still relatives of mine who went to that wedding. I'm still waiting for the gift, but Tony. Tony gave for a gift. And then we moved to Vermont. We had a baby, we moved to Vermont. So it became much harder to see Tony, right? But I always said, listen, when you get to your 10 year anniversary. I'll come down for that. So the 10 years came. It was a giant snowstorm that hit Vermont. And I called him. I said, tony, I just can't make it. You know, I'm so sorry. I said, you know, And I always wondered, is he gonna make it to 10 years? But he was so dedicated to the 12 steps and to his meetings. Very dedicated. So then I said, listen, when you make it to 20 years, I'll come down. So short of 10 years later. I called him in November. I said, tony, isn't this your 20th anniversary? He goes, yeah. He gave me the date. I said, I'm coming. So sure enough, I took the train down there, got off at 125th street in Harlem. He met me on the platform. We went off to Soul Food, because you cannot get soul food in Vermont. And I went. It was like. It was great. It was. I. I was all these men and women, all of them struggling, you know, to overcome their addiction. Tony, it's his 20th anniversary. I was the only white male. There was one white female. She comes up to me and says, congratulations on your 20th anniversary. I'm like, it's not me, it's him. But it was the same thing. It was just wonderful. The support, it was. It was just a great thing. So anyway, last year was his. His 24th year, and it was on Zoom. And my wife and I, we dropped our son at college. We're driving back from Indiana, and I suddenly told my wife, we're in Ohio. I said, we gotta pull over and find a hotel. I gotta open up my laptop. Tony's Zoom 24th anniversary is about to start. So I did it from a hotel room somewhere outside of Cleveland. And the 25th is coming up. I have to go down for the 25th. And he lives in an apartment in Brooklyn with his daughter, who's grown now, and she has her own daughter. He even has his own business. He started a clothing line, forty Plus. He sells hoodies and T shirts and hats. When people say, what do you want for your birthday? I'm like, get me a 40 plus hoodie. Give me some of Tony's clothing. So it's an amazing friendship. You know, when you think about it, we text or call each other almost every. We have nothing in common. Nothing.
