Halloween event memorializes mentor to youth
CHESTER >> Halloween will arrive early for area children today when cars open up at the J. Lewis Crozer Library and Memorial Park lots for Anthworld 96, LLC’s second annual “trunk-or-treat” event.
Volunteers at the event, running 4:30-8 p.m., will be distributing candy to trick or treaters and honoring the memory of a late mentor to local youth, Anthony D. Brown Jr.
The trunk-or-treat events are the first organized by the charitable group founded in honor of Brown by his mother, Meshel Ellzy, and a group of friends following his August 2017 death at age 21 in an ATV accident.
“When my son passed away, his friends … came to me and wanted to keep his memory alive,” said Ellzy. “They would share things with me that I didn’t know about my son – how he was toward kids. I didn’t know that he had that compassion, that heart, towards the little kids.”
Raising her children in uptown Chester City and the Maple Village section of Chester Township, Ellzy and her husband relocated the family to Delaware when Brown was a student at Cardinal O’Hara High School. Following graduation from Brandywine High School, Brown returned to Maple Village to live with his ill grandfather and be close to friends.
Working as a residential counselor for Elwyn, Brown often spent his off-hours with neighborhood youth. “Once he got off work he’d go through the neighborhood and sit there and talk to the kids, tell them to stay in school, stay out of trouble, ask, ‘Do you guys need anything?’” said Ellzy. “His main quote was, ‘Despite where we live at, you still can be successful.’”
Brown’s care for children prompted his mother and friends to devote the Anthworld 96 charity to focus on the youth of greater Chester. Within the charity’s first year, the trunk or treat was planned as a small inaugural event but elicited a larger than anticipated response.
“I was really surprised that people heard because we didn’t put it out there,” said Ellzy, noting the event’s informal promotion on social media. “I didn’t know people were talking about it like that … now it’s like kind of blowing up.” Ellzy estimated more than
100 children attended the
2018 trunk or treat, held in the parking lot immediately behind Crozer Library.
“(Children) came before we got set up,” Ellzy said. “At the same time, the Chester Panthers (youth football team) had their homecoming game down in the park. At halftime their kids came over. The coaches were saying, ‘We’re happy that you let them come over, they had a real good time,’” she said.
The positive response to the first event and anticipation for the second captured city government’s attention. Officials asked to partner with the charity and has provided greater space and lighting for the
2019 event, according to Ellzy.
Members of Anthworld 96 are planning to move into fundraising to benefit other causes in Brown’s memory. “He loved … all kinds of animals. We’re going to give back to the SPCA once we start growing. He liked St. Jude’s (Children’s Hospital) so we’re going to give back to St. Jude’s,” Ellzy said.
“Our main goal is to help the kids in the city of Chester that he was mentoring,” she said. The charity is planning scholarship fund, with details yet to be determined.
The charity is working towards 501(c)(3) status and plans to begin fundraising efforts with an April bowling event in Delaware, followed by a murder mystery dinner and possible skating rink event.
“I want to have my t’s crossed and i’s dotted – I’m teaching his friends how to do (fundraising administration) the right way,” Ellzy said, holding formal meetings for the charity and teaching members grant writing and the fundraising process. “I keep telling them it’s a long process. It doesn’t happen overnight,” she said.
“I just want to make him proud, I want him to know … at a young age he was on his way, but unfortunately with the accident it stopped… but it’s not really going to stop here … we’re going to push it all the way until the good Lord takes me home,” she said.