BURLESON, Texas – Anansi Flaherty, a backup fullback on Katy (Texas) High School’s 2000 State Championship team, gave his life to Christ in prison. Last month, he was baptized – “raised to walk in new life” – outside those walls.
Flaherty was a featured guest at a luncheon for the Primetimers, the senior adult ministry of First Baptist Church in Burleson. He then climbed into a metal trough to make his faith commitment clear.
Flaherty’s high school coach, Jeff Dixon – who has provided support and familial care since first seeing reports of the terrible crime that led to Flaherty’s incarceration – knelt beside the trough. Jack Crane, pastor of Truevine Missionary Baptist Church in Fort Worth, dipped Flaherty beneath the water.
“God is at work here,” Dixon noted at multiple points in his presentation leading up to the baptism. Those who could stood and clapped.
Don Newbury, retired president of Howard Payne University and retiring co-director of Primetimers, noted that many in the room had followed Flaherty and Dixon’s story as he had, praying and supporting the young man whose life had taken such a tragic turn, now bearing witness to his redemption this Christmas season.
It was in the Christmas season of 2002 when the Fort Bend County sheriff’s department received a call about a “suspicious male walking down the street.” A witness described large amounts of blood on this clothing and body, a 2003 article reported.
That day was not discussed in the Primetimers luncheon program, apart from a handout, and little about the incident is publicly available or clear. According to several reports, Flaherty remembers few details of that day.
Reports say he recalled being high on drugs, and when he was approached by officers, the 19-year-old said he had killed his mother.
In a plea deal, Flaherty was sentenced to 40 years for first-degree murder, eligible for parole in 2022.
The hero of the story
“God’s the hero of every story,” Dixon began his message at the luncheon. “And He is most certainly the hero of this one.”
Dixon coached and taught at various high schools around Texas and had a job he loved in Ennis. When he got the call to come to Katy, he initially wasn’t interested. But that soon changed.
“We were convinced because of prayer that God called us to Katy,” Dixon said, noting when “you find yourself in God’s will, He turns you to where He wants you to be.”
They still cried when they pulled away from Ennis, the little town they’d loved so much, but “God was at work,” he said.
Flaherty played fullback on the Katy team – a position that Dixon coached. recalled Flaherty being a kid everyone liked. Even during disciplinary-type drills designed to “get your attention,” Flaherty kept smiling when anyone else would have been miserable, Dixon said.
Dixon spent many hours tutoring Flaherty in math to keep him eligible. He would also check on him at the apartment he lived in near the school – alone.
“Can you imagine being by yourself like that?” Dixon asked the luncheon attendees, adding that if not for football, Flaherty would likely have been in a lot of trouble.
Sometimes coaches would buy him groceries. Weekly, the Dixon family hosted a meal for running backs at their home. The family got to know Flaherty and care about him, Dixon said.
When he graduated, Flaherty went to Texas A&M in Kingsville to continue playing football but came home for Christmas break in 2002. Dixon and his wife, on break themselves, turned on the news – where in the mugshot accompanying a tragic story, they saw a familiar face.
The impact of faithful friendship
Dixon went to see Flaherty in the Fort Bend County Jail and continued to visit him weekly for a year. He was present in the courtroom when Flaherty was sentenced to 40 years.
Then the Dixon family went to work praying for Flaherty. Flaherty refers to his time in the penitentiary as being “in the belly of the fish,” in a reference to Jonah. All during Flaherty’s incarceration the two men exchanged letters.
Dixon often traveled to visit Flaherty as he was moved around the state to various penitentiaries. For 22 years, the men stayed in touch, and Flaherty shared in his letters how God was working in his life, signing the letters with “In His grip” and “Your Second Son, Anansi.”
When Dixon asked Flaherty whose grip that was, his answer was, “Yahweh’s.”
For 22 years, Dixon said his conversations with Flaherty were through thick glass by a phone with a bad connection.
When he got word in November of Flaherty’s parole and release to a halfway house in Houston, the family headed that way. God was at work, Dixon said, because the parole officer happened to be there and explained Flaherty needed a plan for when his remaining 20 days in the halfway house concluded.
They made a plan, and Flaherty now lives in the Fort Worth area, is attending a weekly Bible study and soon hopes to get a car.
In a Q&A time at the luncheon, Flaherty explained he began to understand the power of forgiveness as an adult in prison.
He said in his youth he had anger issues, believing he had to fight back against “the man” and racial injustice. But he learned in prison if he could “let it slide” when a guard upset him, that guard might stick up for him when he needed it.
“You know when someone is really for you,” Flaherty said. True friendship should be unconditional, not circumstantial.
Just before the baptism, Flaherty asked to leave the audience with an acrostic: “G-O-S-P-E-L – God’s Obedient Son Providing Eternal Life.”
This article originally appeared in the Baptist Standard.
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