FRANKLIN COUNTY, Va. – On July 28th, Tony Gill was shot and killed in Gretna, leaving Franklin County in shock as to how something so tragic could’ve happened to a man so beloved.
Gill was many things in life: a husband, father, coach, educator and mentor.
Mention his name, and people will always have something positive to say. His positive nature and attitude extended to the basketball court, where players like Raygan Wright and Ariyah Clement, who played for Gill on the Franklin County High School basketball team, remembered a coach who could be tough but fair.
“He was just the encouraging one,” Wright said. “He wanted to make sure you did your best and always had critiques for how you could get better.
“He was very hard, but in a good way,” Clements said. “He helped a lot of people out.”
Gill was both a special education teacher and the head coach of the FCHS girls’ basketball team.
Players on the team signed a basketball in his honor while cherishing the memories they had of him.
“We decided to play a prank and run away during conditioning,” Wright said. ”The next day, he decided to prank us back by having us fake run 20 stadiums.”
Even those who didn’t get the chance to interact with him on a daily basis went out of their way to learn more about a man beloved by an entire community.
“I have visited with his wife and son this week and found out a little more and they just reaffirmed that what I had always felt the few times I had a conversation with him,” Franklin County Public Schools superintendent Kevin Spiers said. “That he is a genuinely nice guy who cared about kids and loved what he did and made everybody around him better because of his dedication to the kids of Franklin County.”
Now, his team and the Franklin County community will honor him by living life the way he would want them to: by doing more right than wrong.
“I would just want to tell him thank you for everything because I never got the chance,” Clements said.