Archdeacon: UD basketball coach and artist unite after personal tragedies to fight mental health stigmas

When veteran local photographer Horace Dozier Sr. came to the University of Dayton basketball offices to shoot a picture of Flyers’ head coach Anthony Grant and his wife Chris for the Dayton Skyscrapers project, he brought along his own wife, Juanita.

“She and Chris hit if off right away,” Dozier said quietly

If the women’s personalities meshed, so too did their sense of familial love…and painful loss.

Since the Dayton Skyscrapers venture was launched in 2007 by Bing Davis, the internationally acclaimed artist, longtime educator and local treasure, none of the 140 honorees and the regional artists who portrayed them have connected more than did the Grants with Dozier and his wife.

You don’t realize it when you’re looking at the loving photo of the Grants – with their late daughter Jayda smiling at them from behind – but in some ways you are also looking at the Doziers.

On May 30, 2022, Jayda Grant, who was just 20, took her own life.

Just 23 days earlier, Lamont Dozier, who was 51 and the oldest son of the Dozier’s, did the same thing.

The losses devasted both families.

Eventually it drew them together.

“They had heard our story and were willing to share theirs,” Grant said. “He and his wife talked about when they first approached this idea, they still were healing. We were able to connect with them on that. It was personal, but at the same time it was healing for them and us. I really appreciated that.”

Because of the elevated platform he has around here as the Dayton Flyers’ head coach and the similar standing he has nationally because he’s one of the college game’s most respected coaches, Grant had found a way he and Chris and their three sons could both honor Jayda, who they called Jay, and try to prevent other young people and their families from going through something similar.

With Chris spearheading the start of the Jay’s Light Foundation, a mental health and suicide prevention initiative, Anthony — backed by Flyers’ athletics director Neil Sullivan, UD president Dr. Eric Spina and eventually the Flyer Faithful — was instrumental in drawing attention to and raising funds for young people battling mental distress and bearing the stigma that often comes with it.

For the past two Octobers, UD has played a charity basketball exhibition — the first year against Ohio State; last season against Xavier — to add a national spotlight to the cause.

That’s been preceded each year by a Town Hall presentation at UD Arena with a keynote speaker, a panel discussion including the Grants and a mental health fair featuring several organizations that help people in need.

“I’ve wanted to do anything I could do to help them get the word out,” Dozier said. “Anthony has the notoriety to help make it happen, and we all have the need.”

The 2025 Dayton Skyscrapers exhibit — which features 19 honorees presented in a various mediums by 11 local artists — opened to the public eight days ago at the University of Dayton’s Roger Glass Center for the Arts. It will stay open until June 30.

But, as is the case each year, that ending is just the beginning for the Skyscraper images.

At the directive of Davis — who during his career taught at Colonel White High School and DePauw, Miami and Central State universities — a partnership was struck in 2010 with the Dayton Public Schools who began to permanently display the Skyscraper images in the 27 different schools it supervises.

“I always intended them to be more than just decoration though,” Davis said. “I wanted them to be a tool for learning.”

The project not only pays tribute to African American men and women whose achievements have made them stand tall in the region and often beyond, but it celebrates the local black artists who presented their visual images and stories.

“The Dayton Public Schools system is the first in the nation to have an extensive art collection by African American visual artists displayed in all its schools as an integral part of the learning experience,” Davis said.

The program is so unique, so respected, that over the years Davis has travelled the country — and made presentations in Russia and China, too — detailing the Skyscrapers project so others could create similar programs.

Celebrated as it is, the program’s funding is in jeopardy because of the Trump Administration’s cuts to public education programs.

Another blow to the Grant’s effort is coming from the NCAA, which this year is allowing college basketball programs to earn money from preseason exhibitions against outside competition, rather than just play for charitable causes.

“With the climate we’re in now, most people are going to play games this year to make money and bolster their NIL deals,” Grant said. “That will make it much harder to get the marque type game we’ve had the first two years.

“We’re still planning on having a game, but right now we don’t know just what it will look like. And we still plan to have the Town Hall. I feel that’s been helpful and well-received.”

Certainly, the need is still there.

According to groups such as the Ohio Suicide Prevention Foundation, which Chris Grant is involved in:

And all that goes against the government’s current defunding of mental health programs for children.

The Trump Administration recently announced a $1 billion cut to school-based mental health services grants which were created under the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) in response to the Uvalde, Texas school shooting.

This withering blow comes at the same time Congressional leaders are trying to slash funding for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which together insures 37 million children in the U.S.

Against that bleak picture, the sanguine “Beat the Stigma” image, as Dozier entitled the photo of the Grants, takes on more purpose for young people and their families needing help when it comes to mental wellness.

Similar local roots

Dozier and Davis grew up in the same small, black neighborhood in Dayton’s predominately white, Appalachian-rooted inner East End.

“We came from the same neighborhood,” Davis said. “I grew up on Diamond Avenue and he grew up on Irwin. I used to pass their house on the way to school.”

While Dozier — who at 74 is 13 years younger than Davis — said he didn’t know Davis when he was growing up, he’d certainly heard of him.

“He was a legend in our neighborhood.”

Davis was a standout basketball and track athlete — both at Wilbur Wright High and DePauw University — and soon after was making a name for himself as an artist.

Dozier ended up at Roosevelt High and after graduating, he and Juanita, his high school sweetheart, married and had two children.

Horace Jr., the youngest, went on to an Air Force career and has shown the same artistic nature as his dad.

“Lamont wanted to be an engineer, but he began suffering symptoms and had to go under medical care,” Horace Sr. said. “He had a rough go of it.”

Right after Lamont’s death, Jayda Grant died as well.

Her passing not only rocked the UD campus — where she’d been on the track team after standout performances both at Chaminade Julienne High and, before that, at an Oklahoma City high school when her dad was an assistant coach with the NBA’s Thunder — but it shook the city of Dayton and the college basketball world.

Some 16 months after Jay’s death, the Grants met with me at their home south of the UD campus. It was the first time the couple spoke together publicly about their loss.

“We’re going through something that is the worst thing as a parent that you ever could go through,” Grant said then. “When something like this happens, your life is broken. So, while you find a way to pick up the broken pieces and glue them back together, the cracks are always going to be there.

“You can choose to deal with it in silence, by yourself, and not do anything and I’m not saying that’s wrong. Everybody grieves differently.”

He said they hoped they could stay strong enough to use his platform and try to help others in need:

“We want to honor our daughter and at the same time try to help break the stigma in terms of the way people view mental health and mental illness and suicide ideation (suicidal thoughts).

“And we want to allow people who are doing great work in the space to speak. We want to give people resources.

“We want to give them hope so you have a person saying, ‘Yesterday, I didn’t think I could come out of this, but now I think I can survive.’”

The real message

Grant had the Doziers meet him and Chris in his UD office, where several basketball remembrances are displayed.

A large mural of a sold-out UD Arena graces one wall. Near it is a big silver trophy and a net from the 29-2 season when the Flyers were unbeaten in the Atlantic 10. There’s a collection of basketballs designating milestone victories in Grant’s 17 years as a college head coach.

Dozier had the couple pose on the couch and made sure no hoops refences got in the photo. He didn’t want the real message to be lost.

To emphasize the Grants and the image of Jayda behind them, he kept both in color and made everything else in the picture black and white. That gave the photo a 3D effect.

“I thought the picture was well done,” Chris said. “It’s not so somber. It shows we’re doing well and getting through this, but is also keeps in mind that our daughter, who’s looking over our shoulders, is not with us.”

Dozier said some people have told him they see love between the Grants…and strength.

he 2025 Dayton Skyscrapers exhibit was unveiled at a gala reception at the Glass last Saturday evening.

“It was our first time at a Skyscrapers event,” Grant said. “Just hearing some of the work the other people had done in the community was pretty amazing.”

Chris agreed, saying, “It was a real honor to be a part of something like this. But after hearing all the great work the other recipients were doing, we were like ‘Wow, do we even belong here?’”

While the Grants certainly did belong — and their ongoing Jay’s Light efforts will continue to bolster their impact in the future — there’s no denying the other recipients were towering Skyscrapers.

A couple of other honorees also had sports ties, though like with the Grants, that’s not why they were recognized.

Ron Todd — the former Belmont High and Bowling Green football player who then became an agent representing football and baseball players who often were overlooked — was honored by artist Morris Howard for his past work as the minority affairs liaison for Governor Mike DeWine and his current position as the Chief of Social Impact and Opportunity for the Ohio Department of Development.

And Irving Moses, the father of legendary Dayton Olympian Edwin Moses, was saluted by artist James Pate not only for his work as a longtime DPS educator, but also for being in the first class of the Tuskegee Airmen and serving in World War II.

“This is the best show we’ve ever had,” said Davis.

“I think I know most of the people, but every year I learn something I didn’t know about some of them,” Davis said. “I didn’t know Ron Todd was a former athlete at all.

“And though I knew Mr. Moses — he, along with (coach) Jack Hart and (Olympian) Dave) Albritton were male educators and our heroes – I didn’t realize he was a Tuskegee Airman.”

Thanks to Dozier, who now has done images for six Skyscraper exhibits, Davis also got a better appreciation of the Grants whom he’d just known from afar.

In turn, what especially impressed Grant was what happens to the exhibit after it is removed from galleries and goes to schools.

Davis, with the help of the DPS carpentry crew, divides the work and gets it displayed so students across the city can see it daily and learn the stories that come with it.

“We’re working with the teachers and encouraging them to utilize these stories across the various disciplines,” he said.

That their story — thanks to the efforts of Dozier — will be introduced to young people is just what they were hoping for.

“That’s our goal. We’re trying to impact to impact 14 and 15-year-olds — and young adults, too — people who are just trying to figure life out," Grant said.

It’s why he and Chris sat down in front of Dozier’s camera.

And it’s why Horace and Juanita wanted them to do so.

In many ways, the Grants’ story was their story, too.

MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS DIGITAL GUIDE

Mental health issues affect all segments of our community in slightly different ways. Our in-depth reporting focus for the past year has been centered on children and adults through our Mental Health Matters series. This important effort will not stop there; read our continued coverage online.

daytondailynews.com/mental-health-matters