The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Son of heroic DeKalb bookkeeper says her memoir doesn’t capture his reality
Derrick Tuff began life the way a lot of premature babies do — fraught with uncertainties.
He was diagnosed with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a rare but devastating inherited disorder affecting nerves in the hands, arms, feet and legs. He also had retinopathy of prematurety, a disease that causes abnormal blood vessels to grow in the retina, the layer of nerve tissue in the eye that enables us to see.
Though he often struggled to balance himself, he could walk without assistance until fifth grade. By age 15, he was using a wheelchair and could barely see or hear.
But he’s never used his disability as a crutch, a reason to not live his life to the fullest. His attitude, he said, is due in large part to his mother, Antionette Tuff, the DeKalb County school bookkeeper who was thrust into the spotlight in 2013 when she talked down an armed campus intruder.
That’s why her portrayal of him in a memoir, “Prepared for a Purpose: The Inspiring True Story of How One Woman Saved an Atlanta School Under Siege,”
took him by surprise.
When he learned recently that her story was the subject of a new Lifetime movie, a project of Bishop T.D. Jakes and starring Toni Braxton, it was like adding insult to injury.
“She was all about people not treating me sympathetically,” he said. “She didn’t view me as disabled; she viewed me as normal.”
But in the book, Tuff said, his mother made it seem like he was incapable of taking care of himself.
“I’ve never sat back and let people do things for me,” he said in an email sent earlier this month.
Antionette Tuff, you might recall, was at work in the front office of the McNair Discovery Learning Acad- emy on Aug. 20, 2013, when 20-year-old Michael Brandon Hill entered the school with a rifle and several hundred rounds of ammunition.
Tuff talked Hill into surrendering to officers. No one was injured, although police said Hill fired shots at responding officers.
Hill pleaded guilty in DeKalb County Supe- rior Court to charges that included aggravated assault and burglary and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Antoinette Tuff, who did not respond to requests for comment, dedicates “Prepared for a Purpose” first to God and then to her son Derrick, who she says is the first man in her family to graduate college.
“You are a beautiful miracle,” she writes, “and I am so proud God is using you to his Glory.”
Antoinette Tuff praises her son’s independence in sev-come their challenges,” he eral passages, but he takes said. issue with her description Although he has to work of his legs as “useless and harder because of his disabil- curled up beneath him” and ities, Tuff said it has never other observations he found occurred to him to quit or hurtful. expect others to do what he
In o ne instance she can do for himself. writes, “There were many motto in life is, ‘where days when I’d watch Derthere’s a will, there’s a way’,” rik hobble around or stare he said. “I constantly look at the sky with his broken for alternative ways to do eyes.” In another: “One day things to minimize the help when Derrick was younger that I have to receive. I don’t and surrounded by ther a-believe in semi-dependency. pists, I closed my eyes and I believe in self-sufficiency.” formed a picture of him as Tuff said he can cook and a grown-up. I saw him on dress himself. He can also a street corner, in tattered catch the bus without help. clothes, leaning on a cane He said he was the one and begging for bread.” who learned about the Loui-
Derrick Tuff said he was siana Center for Blind, toured shocked and disappointed the campus, applied and when he discovered how graduated from there in 2011. he’d been portrayed. “She did assist me with
“This deeply saddens me some steps in the process, because the image of inde- but I was in the driver’s seat pendence I built was being when it came to decisions torn down and I couldn’t about my education,” he do anything to prevent it.” said.
He wishes his mother had Tuff also took exception to written more about his spirit his mother’s account of his of determination. relationship with his father.
“It could’ve potentially “She said that I said, motivated people to over- ‘Daddy never loved me. He just tolerated me,’” he recalled. “I never said that. I said that my father didn’t know what to do with me because I wasn’t what he expected.”
His mother, on the other hand, was wonderful.
“She made sure that I had everything I needed,” he said. “She always supported me.”
Their relationship, however, began to change around age 18 when his father left.
“She clung tighter,” he said. “She wanted me to be her life partner.”
On the day of the shooting, “she said that I was hanging out with friends. I was actually going furniture shopping with my fiancee.”
Tuff met Kimberly Greer at Shamrock Middle School in Tucker. They reconnected in 2013 and have been together since. He says Antoinette Tuff didn’t want anyone to know he was living with Greer “because it wasn’t right in the eyes of God.”
In 2014, Tuff, Greer and her daughter left Atlanta to live in Little Rock, Ark., where he believed he’d have a better chance finding work. Two years ago, Greer gave birth to Tuff ’s son.
The couple h opes to launch a nonprofit — Proj- ect HIDE — to help people with disabilities excel per- sonally and professionally.
“This has always been my goal in life,” Tuff said. “I’ve always been passionate about helping individuals with disabilities pursue independence.”
A big part of that is owning his disabilities, he said. But it’s also about moving beyond that and doing whatever it takes to live life fully and independently.
That’s the story he wishes his mother had told.