You’re 12 years old – almost 13 – and you’ve already developed the kind of reputation on the hardwood that has kids from all over calling you “A.I.”, after your hero, Allen Iverson, whose fast, smooth and loose playing style you’ve unconsciously already adopted as your own.
You’re 12 years old, and already you’ve seen more grittiness in the world than most children ever should.
Mom’s been in and out of prison for most of your life. Dad’s never been in the picture. As the middle child in a group of eight, you’ve seen your older siblings misstep, and watched as they’ve tried to clean up their lives and start over.
But life isn’t hard for you. Not like that. You’re Jordan Millberry, and you don’t look at things that way because that’s not the kind of kid you are.
So instead, you take pleasure in everything you have going for you.
You have a caring extended family and a doting grandmother – the woman who raised you, and who’s become perhaps the most important person in your young life.
You take pride in your athletic ability, and play both basketball and football like you were born to do it.
You enjoy the company of a tight band of friends who are more like brothers, really, because you’ve all played basketball together since you were 7, traveled to tournaments together, and dream about one day winning a state championship together – as Rollers.
Steelton is your town, and you roam the familiar streets content in the knowledge that you belong. This place, with its ethnic neighborhoods, old steel mills, and rough-hewn wood houses where folks still call cheerily to each other from the porch, is home.
You’re 12 years old, and you’re content with your life.
Then, one day, everything changes.
Good People
Known to everyone as “Miss Viv”, Vivian Millberry was an iconic, matriarchal figure in Steelton, who, in her 71 years, managed to raise her own six children, numerous grandchildren, and more than a hundred other state-assigned foster children.
“Miss Viv” became a parent when she had her first child, Arnetta Primas, in 1957.
She never slowed down, and only stopped on Dec. 10, 2008.
The day she died.
Her unexpected passing took the family by surprise.
At Halloween, Nanna was fine. But at Thanksgiving, she was in the hospital, and by Christmas she was gone, a victim of cancer that had spread so fast there was nothing doctors could do.
She was everyone’s grandma, but she and Jordan were particularly close.
They used to exercise together, at night, the boy following Nanna’s quirky workout regimen. They’d wrestle together too, the old woman displaying surprising strength to out-maneuver and trap her wiry, but well-muscled grandson.
The Millberrys were staunch Rollers fans, and for years, Vivian, and her husband, Melvin, would attend sporting events at the high school, always cheering loudly.
Jordan never got to meet his grandfather because Melvin died in 1990, but as his cousin, Kimarie Brown likes to remind him, grandpa was such a big Steel-High sports fanatic that the Rollers were mentioned in his obituary.
“They would be so proud of you, you have no idea,” Brown tells Jordan regularly, the comment as much a testament to what the boy has already made of himself, as it is a reminder of everything he could one day become.
When Miss Viv died, folks around town wondered what would happen to the four Millberry children.
But there was never any cause for worry. Kimarie Brown, the oldest of Nanna’s 28 grandchildren, and her husband, Anthony Brown, volunteered to take in all four kids because she wanted to keep the brood together.
“I’ve known for a long time that if anything happened to my grandma, I would make this decision,” she says, resolute.
It was always part of her plan, something she’d discussed with Anthony even when they were dating.
“I’ve been in their lives since they were babies, so it was hard to just turn that over to somebody else,” Kimarie says. “And my grandma’s last words to me were ‘take care of them.’”
So Kimarie and Anthony adopted the kids, and Jordan, Isaiah, Kapri and Karissa joined the Browns, their daughter, Taylor, and infant, Tajh, in their four-bedroom Susquehanna Township home.
When Jordan found out he’d have to move to live with Kim and Anthony, he cried.
The boy who can be spotted grinning up at the camera in the Rollers basketball team’s 2005 state championship picture, realized then that he would not get to don a Steel-High jersey.
He wanted to be a Roller, to play four years of varsity basketball with his guys, the kids Coach Marc had trained as a group – the ones who’d come one point shy of finishing their seventh grade season with an 18-0 record.
Losing to Central Dauphin in triple over-time stung.
But that’s when the town realized that the class of 2014 held the future of Steel-High basketball in their dexterous, deliciously agile hands.
Indians jersey instead of a Rollers one
The Browns understood Jordan’s pain.
Kim, who’d been a cheerleader and track athlete for the Rollers, could empathize because she too had to switch schools and move from Steelton to New Jersey when her mother married before her sixth grade year.
“I was in New Jersey from sixth grade to ninth grade, but I was home every summer with my grandparents, and I’d be on the phone with my grandfather asking who’d won the Rollers game,” Kim says. “I remember I had a Rollers umbrella and a jersey.”
She moved back to Steelton after her grandfather died in 1990, enrolled in Steel-High in the middle of ninth grade, and slept in Nanna’s room.
She understood how Jordan felt when he discovered he’d have to transfer to Susquehanna Township, and she allowed him to continue living with an aunt in Nanna’s through the fall term of his freshman year.
So for one season, Jordan got to wear a Rollers’ football jersey.
The kid made varsity as a freshman, worked his way onto the starting lineup at receiver, and finished the season as a two-way starter after outside linebacker Clayton McNair sustained a serious head injury, and the backup subsequently also got hurt.
That opened the door for Jordan, the unlikeliest of candidates at 5-foot-4, 130 pounds, to fill the open linebacker spot, and he responded with 13 tackles in the District 3 semi-final.
“Listen, he’s been small all his life, so he’s found ways to overcome that,” says Marc Jones, Jordan’s AAU coach, who handpicked the boy for his Brak-Bred basketball team at the age of 7.
Even then, Jordan displayed the same athletic gifts that would make him special on both the football field and the basketball court.
“He was scrappy, fast, and aggressive, already you could tell he had a feel for the game,” Jones says. “He had a lot of heart, and wasn’t backing down from the big kids or nothin’. Imagine, at seven years old, how small he was then.”
That hasn’t changed.
As he takes the court in Susquehanna Twp’s home finale against Williamsport, Jordan is at least a head shorter than every other boy on the floor.
Even in his red-and-white Indians uniform, the “2” on his jersey connects him to his Rollers because his girlfriend, Steel-High sophomore guard Jazmine Blanding, wears the same number.
The Indians lead 30-15 in the second, but Williamsport has the ball.
With Anthony and the five kids watching from the bleachers, Jordan drops back on defense.
Reading the play correctly, he slides to the Williamsport guard to pre-empt a pass. But he’s just a step too slow.
“Once he gets stronger and used to the game at this level, he’ll be much better. He’s a second late,” remarks Anthony who played basketball for Susquehanna Twp., then won a PSAC championship at Mansfield University in 1997.
A second late, and a head short, Jordan is still adjusting to both varsity basketball and to his new life with the Browns.
For instance, he realized in the Indians’ defeat to big man-dominated Red Land this season that trying to drive to the basket is usually ineffective.
“I used to be able to just take it in, do the layups. But now I just gotta work on my jump shot, my stops, pulling up over defenders. I can’t take it in no more,” Jordan says.
Instead of commanding the team the way he would have if he’d played for Steel-High’s underclassman-filled team this year, the presence of Indians’ star A.J. Dean also means Jordan has had to take an auxiliary role.
They play off each other well through – as they demonstrate when Dean steals the ball, shoots down the court on a fast break, then dumps off to a wide-open Jordan, who goes in for the layup.
Two points.
The kid’s intense face is impassive as he turns to start back up on defense.
His heart will always be in Steelton, but he’s playing for Susquehanna now
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