‘They were just living’: Indianapolis family reels after 9 die in duck boat sinking
Anthony King is in his garage in a subdivision northwest of Indianapolis, and he doesn’t want to stop moving.
Right now he just wants to surround himself with the boy-size jerseys and football helmets he needs to sort through in time for sign-ups for the M.G. Dad’s Club Red Dogs, a youth football league that aims to teach kids life skills through sport.
But his phone won’t stop dinging.
Twenty-five years ago, King was a 9-year-old kid in awe of the stern but kind Horace “Butch” Coleman — a volunteer coach for the league for 4- to 13-year-olds who would later become King’s coach and mentor.
In the years after King graduated from the M.G. Dad’s Club, his revered coach became a close friend, and King, now 34, serves as league president.
Last night, when the barrage of messages from journalists across the country and friends throughout Indianapolis wouldn’t come to an end, King finally had to turn off the device so he could take a break from the devastating news he had learned earlier that day.
On Thursday night, Coleman died on a family vacation after the duck boat he was riding in swiftly sank after stormy weather struck Table Rock Lake near Branson.
Accompanying Coleman, 70, was his entire immediate family: wife Belinda Coleman, 69, called “Toni” by some; children Angela, 45, and Glenn, 40; as well as five grandchildren, his brother Ervin Coleman and his daughter-in-law Tia.
Ervin, Belinda, Angela and her son, Max, 2, and Glenn and his children, Reece, 9, Evan, 7, and Arya, 1, were also killed.
Glenn’s wife, Tia Coleman, and Angela’s son, Donovan, 13, survived the tragedy, which claimed 17 lives.
Now King feels like he’s navigating a surreal hellscape, as if he has lost his own parent. But he also feels like he owes it to his mentor to tell Coleman’s story.
So he turns his phone back on. And he patiently fields a FaceTime call from a television network from his dining room table. And he talks about the man who was not just a “business colleague” or a “board member” but also his “buddy.”
King said he felt an “automatic level of respect” for Coleman from the first day he met him as a kid in the youth league. Coleman coached him at quarterback when he aged up to Coleman’s team, and the two had a chemistry that kept them close long after King stopped playing football.
A retired UPS worker, Coleman was a “loving, opinionated” man who loved kids, King said. He was a private person, King said, and yet still spent “countless” hours helping his community.
Coleman had been a volunteer coach for the program for decades and only recently had started spending more time as a board member. Each year he threw a Labor Day party at his home attended by both his biological family and his M.G. Dad’s Club family.
He helped host “Stop the Violence” tournaments to bring awareness to gun violence in Indianapolis.
Coleman was the person King went to for advice, whether it be about career, kids or a relationship.
“That’s your partner. I know you want to keep that stress, but you have to tell her,” Coleman told King three years ago when King was struggling to tell his wife that he and other coaches had been let go from a job.
Coleman’s relationship with his wife, Belinda, was also something King said he admired.
“Behind every great man there’s got to be a better woman,” King said of Belinda Coleman. “She was very loving.”
Belinda Coleman’s family started a church in Madisonville, Ky., said Cory Johnson, who is a second cousin to Angela and Glenn Coleman. Later, the family migrated north to Indianapolis, and Johnson’s grandfather built a church.
The family still attends and operates the Christ Church Holiness. Belinda Coleman was recognized as an elder within the church community. She was kind, and like her husband, she commanded respect.
“She was definitely one of the best Christians I ever met,” Johnson said. “And a mother figure to any child.”
King called Butch and Belinda Coleman a “perfect match.”
“I think she knew how to balance him, and he needed a little balancing,” King said with a laugh. Sometimes, King said, Coleman needed to be saved from the “tough man” role he liked to play.
He was the kind of guy who would shake his head at kids for bouncing basketballs when they signed up for the football league at the park, who would rib you for getting stranded if you called for a ride but also rib you if you called anyone else, King said.
As the couple grew older, Johnson said, she also noticed the beautiful friendship that was the core of their marriage. The love extended to their children.
They were a tightknit family and took a family vacation every summer. Last year, the family traveled to Myrtle Beach. This year, they rented a car to spend time in Branson.
Johnson said if you knew the Colemans, you wouldn’t ask why they had gotten on the duck boat that day.
“To them, it was probably just another adventure. They always traveled as a family,” Johnson said. “They were just living.”
Johnson said her cousin, Glenn, also had coached for the M.G. Dad’s Club league and loved spending time with his family.
“He was a proud, proud father and family man,” Johnson said. “It meant something to him to take care of his family.”
His son, Evan, 7, enjoyed school, Johnson said. At a press conference Saturday, Tia Coleman said Evan was “extrememly smart, quick and witty.”
She called Reese, a 9-year-old with autism, “the happiest, sweetest boy,” who loved the water. And though daughter Arya, a “Daddy’s girl,” had just turned 1, she liked to dance and take turns in a pink tutu, Johnson said.
Tia Coleman said her daughter, the only granddaughter, had “1,000 personalities.” She loved to fight, and she loved to blow kisses.
But it’s the loss of Angela Coleman that has hit Johnson most deeply. She said she’s had ups and downs since hearing the news from Table Rock Lake. Then a memory will flood her mind, she said, like a “slap.”
As children, the cousins’ families would take turns taking care of each other’s kids as her parents’ generation pursued careers, Johnson said. Johnson and Angela Coleman spent much time together.
The friendship carried into adulthood. The pair traded goofy texts, talked on the phone and laughed loud enough that it sometimes woke up their kids.
Angela Coleman’s son, Donovan, enjoys martial arts and participated in Boy Scouts, Johnson said. Max, 2, was Angela’s “firecracker,” the kind of kid who made you think twice if it was too quiet in the house.
The cousins took their children to the movies and they planned their own outings. When the blockbuster “Black Panther” was about to be released earlier this year, they planned their outfits and joked about how “extra” they were going to be.
They bought dresses and looked for head wraps for the occasion.
“Let me find a place renting zebras,” Angela Coleman texted her. “I’m riding that in.”
Johnson joked that she would arrive to the movie in a helicopter.
Angela Coleman was also a hard worker, Johnson said, and had recently purchased a home for her boys and herself. (In a Facebook profile picture, she stands with her sons holding a ‘SOLD’ sign wearing a shirt that says “Start living you dreams.”)
She worked for a health insurance provider but had a “side hustle” or two. She sold her own handmade jewelry through a company called Origami Owl, as well as nail decals. She volunteered often and created a food blog called Angiee’s Elegant Eats.
“My love for food comes from a being raised in a family of cooks and bakers, a short stint in culinary school,” she wrote. “I have a deep love of trying something new. I’m a simple home cook who loves food and hanging out with people who love to eat!”
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Johnson said a family member had picked up Donovan from Branson. Tia Coleman is still recovering in the hospital.
Tia Coleman told family members as well as some media outlets that the sinking happened fast. The captain had told the boat riders that they would not need life jackets. By the time the boat was sinking and the captain was tossing them out, it was too late.
She also told family members that the last thing she heard Angela say was “Grab the baby.”
“From being with each other, nine-day church revivals traveling down to Kentucky, to taking our kids to shows and making plans, I will miss my friend,” Johnson said of Angela Coleman. “Not just my cousin. I will miss my friend.”
She said the family was meeting Saturday night. They had been planning a large reunion later in the summer. Now, they are discussing how to help pay for funeral costs. A GoFundMe has been created in their name.
The last time King spoke to Butch Coleman was this past Wednesday, when Coleman called him about borrowing a credit card to rent the van he’d use to take his family on a Missouri vacation.
Neither Coleman nor King carried credit cards, so King directed him to someone else who could help.
It was a normal conversation. And when it was finished, Butch Coleman said he’d check in when he returned from the trip with his family.
“Sometimes,” King said. “You don’t understand what someone meant to you until they’re gone.”
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This story was originally published July 21, 2018 at 9:42 PM.