One Tuff Lady

By Neil Earle

Black History Month sometimes makes a point of pointing out heroic historic figures such as Frederick Douglass or the Tuskegee Airmen or Martin Luther King, Jr. And rightly so. Many would add school bookkeeper Antoinette Tuff of Georgia to that list.

Ms. Tuff was filling in as receptionist at Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Decatur, Georgia in August, 2013. Suddenly a 20-year old gunman walked past her office with an AK-47 shouting, “We’re all going to die.”

The young man with obvious mental problems had already threatened to shoot his brother some time before but was let off lightly. He eventually did end up firing a few rounds at the police through the window during the standoff while children and students hovered for fear.

However, the standoff, as it turned out, would involve Antoinette Tuff (pictured, left), the school bookkeeper, yes, but also a devout Christian lady who had just read Psalm 23 to herself that morning, the one that says, “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil.” Scared to the core of her being, the resilient Mrs. Tuff decided to pray like crazy and surround the young gunman with all the love and compassion she could muster from a Source she knew she could rely on. All the while she was talking him down.

Her pastor had recently talked about Who is the real anchor of our lives and these reassuring statements came flooding back. She called the young gunman endearing names such as ”sweetie” and “baby” and shared her own life struggles with him.

Passing on Grace

She herself had needed the experience of God’s grace to get through her less-than-ideal life. Her dad had not wanted her and made it known, she had had a child out of wedlock, one son had been born with a neurological disorder, her husband of 33 years had cheated on her and left her after a cruel divorce just a short time previous. But the Bible readings and regular church attendance had helped her though it. In her church women’s ministry, she told Anderson Cooper on CNN, Antoinette had heeded the pastor’s wife’s admonition to “push back the pain,” as well as pray like the dickens when evil is upon you.

“God had prepared me for all that,” Antoinette told the “Morning Joe” interview show in January. “I was terrified the whole time, screaming on the inside.”

What was her strategy, interviewer Mia Brezinski asked Antoinette? How could she be so “motherly and yet authoritative at the same time” on the 911 call – calming the young man and urging the police to stay away till he was ready to surrender?

“I wanted him to know I felt his pain,” Antoinette replied, “I told him that God had sent me angels to get me through and would help him too. If he would drop the gun and surrender to the police he could get through this just like I got through my pain.”

She finally persuaded the young man to do just that and the 870 students under full lockdown were delivered. “This could have been another Sandy Hook,” the police commented later. “Antoinette did a model job,” commented another peace officer.

Read more about the whole story in her book, Saved for a Purpose. You’ll find it interspersed with lots of Scripture passages for sure. Christians should take away from this how unabashed this lady was about her faith – speaking to Anderson Cooper on CNN and the Morning Joe panel as if her church life was seamlessly integrated with her work and family life, which it was. Unabashed talk of angels and Bible verses made for a refreshing change on the usually uber-secular big-time talk shows. Oh, for more such ladies.