There’s no sign mounted above the entrance of Tone Oliver Barbershop in La Crosse, Wis. The space above the door is blank, but the shop’s owner insists he’ll hang one soon.
The bricks are worn, and if it weren’t for two large windows framing the door, you might assume the place was vacant.
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But business is bustling. The lack of signage isn’t for lack of funds. It’s just that the owner, Anthony Norris, is a one-man show.
He gets to work early and he doesn’t leave until late. His schedule is packed. To talk to him, you have to work around the shop’s hours. He doesn’t have time for exterior maintenance or advertising right now.
And besides, Tone Oliver already has all the signage it could need throughout Wisconsin and around the country — a walking billboard on the head of Wisconsin’s starting point guard, Bronson Koenig.
Earlier this summer, photos of a feather design Norris shaved into Koenig’s hair — a nod to his Native American heritage — went viral. But the story behind the feather runs deeper than a haircut. Koenig is a rising star in the basketball world, and yes, he has cool designs in his hair.
Bronson Koenig (Photo: Wisconsin Athletics)
The point guard and the barber mean more to each other than that, though. Together, they’ve taught each other the meaning of perseverance and the importance of coping with pressure.
That story can’t start with the feather in Koenig’s hair. It has to start six or seven years ago in a La Crosse YMCA. It’s the story of an unlikely mentor who took a long time to see his own weakness but has spent the last three years making good on it.
Sweating it out
Norris is tall and fit and intimidating at first glance. But if you listen to his voice, you’ll hear kindness, and he’ll tell you how he got here.
Before he met Koenig, Norris used to run.
He wasn’t running for exercise. He would run early in the morning because he needed to sweat out the alcohol. Some mornings, if running wasn’t enough to sweat it out, he would go to the YMCA’s sauna. On his way there, he would see Koenig. As he tells it now, the story feels a bit surreal.
“I would always see him and make eye contact with him,” Norris recalls. “I was always amazed that he was by himself. He didn’t have anyone training with him. He was down there by himself working out. And to be dedicated like that, I was always paying attention to that.”
Back then Norris was on sanctions, bound every morning to call into the police station to find out if he would have to prove his sobriety.
“He would drink all night and pray to God that when he got down there that he wouldn’t blow hard enough to register the alcohol content,” says Norris’ longtime friend and sponsor, Jerry Sample. “He would be willing to take those types of risks to continue the madness and insanity of his addiction, so he could continue drinking.”
Koenig, about to begin high school, was training to get in shape for basketball. He remembers seeing Norris, but they never really interacted. Norris was dating the mom of one of Koenig’s friends, Sam Allen, whom he would frequently bring to the gym to play basketball. The two got to know each other through Sam, but they didn’t initially hit it off.
“I remember him telling me he thought I was kind of arrogant and cocky the first time he met me,” Koenig recalls. “I’ve always been really shy, and I don’t trust people easily, so I don’t say much. So I can see how that could kind of be misconstrued.”
Koenig didn’t think much of Norris at all.
“Just a guy who cuts hair, really,” he remembers thinking back then. “He was pretty funny, too.”
But over time, he began to notice the haircuts Norris was giving Sam, and one day — neither remembers exactly when — he asked for one himself.
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Culture shock
Norris has always been a basketball fan, but in recent years his interest has been revitalized. It’s one thing to be a fan of a successful basketball team; another when you have a bond with one of its point guards.
After knowing Koenig for a couple years, Norris first proposed a design to him before the state championship game his sophomore year. They wanted to do something unique, so Norris suggested they shave a shooting star and Koenig’s No. 24 into the side of his head. It became a tradition of sorts after La Crosse Aquinas won the state title.
After missing most of his junior season with an injury, Koenig committed to Wisconsin and led his team back to the state finals as a senior. Naturally, he had to get another design.
This time Norris shaved a Wisconsin W into the back of his hair for the title game at the Kohl Center.
(Photo: Bronson Koenig)
It was mentioned in preseason previews and drew attention from fans on message boards, one of whom declared on Reddit, “He has the motion W shaved into his hair. The next three years of the Dekker and Koenig Show will change the world.”
Two trips to the Final Four later, that prediction wasn’t too far off. But Koenig’s rise meant something different to Norris, who looked to the basketball player for inspiration. His emergence has helped change Norris’ world.
“I believe that me and Bronson’s spirit is similar,” Norris says. “I’m a fighter. I’ve rebounded from a lot of things in my life.”
Koenig was in the YMCA alone those early mornings, without a training partner, striving to reach this stage.
That inspired Norris, who grew up in poverty-stricken Hopkins Park, Ill. But he faced an entirely different set of challenges. His battles with alcohol and with drugs were products of a past that left him mad at God.
Norris lived near a tavern in Hopkins Park where alcoholics, drug users and violence were prevalent. Hoping to shield him from that culture, his mother sent him to a Christian high school in Shipshewana, Ind., where he had to live with a second family. He moved in with Kevin and Carrie Lambright, not really knowing what he was getting into.
“I remember coming home and trying to watch TV, and Kevin looked at me and said, ‘What’s going on?’ and I said, ‘I’m about to watch “The Cosby Show,’” Norris recalls. “He said ‘No, no, the TV is for guests. We’ve got work to do around here.’”
The Lambrights are Mennonites and their lifestyle is a major factor in Norris’ work ethic. He calls them his second family today, but it was culture shock at first.
“In my head I was like, these people must think I’m a slave around here,” Norris said. “But I’m very thankful for that experience. I used to wake up at 4:30 in the morning and gather eggs at the chicken house, go down and get feed for the dairy cattle and the beef cattle, go home, change my overalls, take my work boots off, clean them before I come in the house, and then take a shower and off to school I’d go. After school it was the same process all over again.”
Upon graduating high school, Norris went into the military and eventually on to college at Wilberforce University in Ohio. He picked up drinking in the service and college, but was on a steady path.
The summer he returned home to Hopkins Park from college, his world changed. His mother died. It left Norris broken.
She had left an inheritance, but her will wasn’t explicit. She left the money to a trusted friend under the assumption she would use it to take care of her son, since he was a minor the last time her will was updated.
But at the time of her death, Norris was in his mid-twenties. The friend skipped town, he says, and he never saw the money.
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Finding a purpose
Norris wasn’t keen on drugs growing up. He was never looking to get hooked on anything.
“At one point in time, in my right frame of mind, if you would have offered something to me, I would have been like, ‘heck no, that’s crazy,’” Norris says. “And I was mad when I found out someone close to me was using cocaine. But after a few drinks, somewhere, somehow, I just said, ‘hey, let me try that.’”
He searches for the words to describe the sensation he can recall from the night he first tried cocaine.
“I don’t want to say (it was a) good experience,” he continues after a few seconds of silence, “But it gave me a lot of energy. And it made me feel (invincible).”
He was angry at the world. Alcohol and cocaine provided an outlet.
He continued using as an adult while he bounced around jobs — mostly odds-and-ends work that included factories, the military, telemarketing and even a slaughterhouse. None of it was very fulfilling.
He did have a hobby, though.
When he was in high school, he got a bad haircut and had to fix it himself. His friends liked the cut he gave himself, but no one believed he was the one who fixed it.
As proof, he offered to do theirs. From there, he started cutting his friends’ hair relatively often, but never considered it a viable job option until about 14 years ago, when he started working at Great Clips.
While cutting hair did fulfill some parts of him, it still wasn’t enough to pull Norris away from substances.
He was no longer the Tony his friends knew, or at least not the way his friends remembered him. He struggled with anger and he wasn’t very trustworthy.
Asked to describe Norris at his worst, Sample recalls, “Very selfish, very self-centered, always thinking about himself. Typical addict’s mentality. Always tried to be one-up on you. Lied to you, manipulated.”
Norris lived with Sample and his wife in 2010 for a year or so when he didn’t have anywhere to go. Sample could understand what Norris was going through. He’s in recovery himself, so when he looked at his friend, he saw a life still salvageable.
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Seeking help
There’s a saying in the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step Program: “The only way to keep it is by giving it away.”
“It” is sobriety. It’s the 12th step in the renowned recovery program and it instructs recovering addicts to interact with other alcoholics as much as possible.
That was the maxim that drove Sample to fight for Tony, to give him multiple chances. Sample gave, working to keep, but also hoping his friend would join him in recovery. Norris’ drinking and his cocaine use stemmed — at least in part — from his struggle to cope with his mom’s death and his anger over his stolen inheritance.
Coping was harder. Relief was a hit or a shot away. And it didn’t make it any easier that he was seeing the harshness of reality every day through his clients.
“I’ve experienced so much. There’s some good laughs and there’s times where things are kind of sad,” Norris said. “I’ve been in the chair, and I’ve cut people’s very last haircut.”
While he was at Great Clips, he cut a man’s hair who worked at a food store next door. The man was friendly and hard working, as Norris remembers. But for about six months, Norris hadn’t seen him.
“One day this really thin guy who could barely walk came into the shop with his family, and he was on a breathing machine,” Norris remembers. “And one of the hardest — one of the hardest things I think I ever did was cut his hair a couple days before he died. I had to hold his head up in the chair.
“That was a hard week for me. I used a lot that week.”
The realization he was on self-destructive path came slowly for Norris, even when the signs around him began to stack up.
He blamed police who pulled him over for drinking and driving, claiming it was racial profiling. He got kicked out of the YMCA for a while. He looked everywhere but at himself.
“He still wouldn’t get it,” Sample said. “It’s not about other people, it’s about you! You have to look at what you’re doing.”
In December 2011, that moment of realization came.
“I got tired of feeling like a failure,” Norris said. “I’ve seen enough people die around me that were using — some of the people that I was close with.
“I felt like I was in the darkness of the darkest place I could ever be in. Using was no longer fun at all. I was pretty much ready to give up on life period. But there’s two sides of you, there’s that something inside of you that wants to give up, but there’s just something inside saying, ‘No, no! If you give up, then you’ve been defeated.’”
Norris called the Lambrights and told them what was happening. They sent for him immediately and had him checked into a rehab facility in Wayzata, Minn.
Three years and almost nine months later, Norris is still clean.
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Fostering community
Norris opened Tone Oliver last year, finally in a position to run a legitimate business of his own.
He thanks God first for his recovery, and the Lambrights second, believing he couldn’t have this success without them.
At first, though, La Crosse wasn’t a place he wanted to be. Norris says there’s still a lot of racism in the community, a lot of drinking and drugs are readily available. He left once before, fleeing the racism, but he came back because of his strong client base. He especially hated the town after he got back from rehab.
But lately, he’s beginning to think he might not have to run from his community.
“I’m starting to realize I can make a change in the community for the better,” Norris said. “It’s just touching a few people at a time. And I see some people around me changing too.”
He has three kids with three women, and he’s doing everything he can to be a good father to them. His son, Tony, moved to La Crosse a couple weeks ago from Florida. He’s 21.
His elder daughter, Shanice Shanelle, just graduated Summa Cum Laude from Bradley. Celia Cruz, who is 11, lives in Milwaukee.
And that’s to say nothing of the other kids in La Crosse, who have their own parents, but also have Norris to look out for them.
There are teenagers who come in to his shop who he can tell have started smoking marijuana. He keeps track of them, suggests alternatives, all in a way that doesn’t scold them. He encourages them to get memberships at health clubs instead or to chase a passion, but they don’t always listen. He’s willing to do almost anything for those who need it.
“People come into his shop who may be down on their luck and need a haircut for a job interview, or need a haircut for pictures for school,” Sample said, comparing how he sees his friend today to five years ago. “Tony will give them haircuts and make sure they’re looking nice and stuff. He’s just a good person that way.”
The one local kid who has meant the most to Norris? Koenig.
They didn’t talk about it much when Norris was still drinking and using, but Koenig was at least peripherally aware of what was going on. Now, as he sees the strides his barber has made, the Wisconsin point guard takes inspiration from it. In that way, their relationship is one of mutual growth. Koenig helped Norris without even knowing it, and now Norris is trying to do the same.
“We talk about it quite a bit, not losing sight of my dream and staying on the straight and narrow,” Koenig said.
It would be foolish to think the 20-year-old hasn’t been faced with temptations. But with Norris in his ear, Koenig has a constant reminder that partying can take a wrong turn quickly.
“He just always tells me how much happier and better is quality of life is without drugs,” Koenig said. “How against any type of drug he is. He keeps telling me that it pushes me farther from my dream if I decided to do any of that stuff.”
As for Norris, their bond has reignited his love of basketball, which he had lost for a long time. He has to keep the games off in his shop because if he doesn’t, he’ll get distracted from cutting hair. He tapes the games and makes sure no one tells him the scores.
“I had stopped watching (basketball) over the years,” Norris said. “But seeing Bronson go to the Badgers and stuff, I started falling in love with it again. Now I watch pretty much all the games.”
Sometimes, he’ll give Koenig advice, telling him to be more aggressive or not pass so much when he has open looks. They talk about managing pressure, stress, but nothing is off-limits.
“I tell him a lot of stuff that I don’t even talk to a lot of my friends about,” Koenig said.
“I think what (their relationship) has done is it has made him realize his potential in life,” said Norris’ friend Reggie Rabb. “Instead of thinking that he can’t, I think the relationship he has with Bronson and some of the other Badgers … it helps him realize that he can be successful.”
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Hope for the future
There’s a topic that’s been broached, but neither Bronson Koenig nor Anthony Norris knows how serious it is.
Someday, Koenig wants to go to the NBA. Norris wants that for him, too. But what will happen to them when he does?
The story is out there about LeBron James’ barber, Nick Castemanos, who left his home in Miami to keep cutting LeBron’s hair in Cleveland. And don’t think they haven’t considered doing something similar.
“I kind of chuckled,” Norris said. “And you know, that would be super, super nice.”
They haven’t discussed it with any kind of sincerity, but it seems like a long shot.
Once upon a time, Norris probably would have leapt at the chance. But he has a stake in this community now. He has wisdom to share. He has kids to care for.
When Bronson goes, there will be others like him who will need to hear Norris’ story, even if they don’t know him.
“I know how important he is in the La Crosse area,” Koenig said. “I’d almost feel bad taking him away from them.”
And soon, assuming he stays in La Crosse, Norris might finally have some help — someone who can help him work quicker, or maybe at least put that sign up above the door.
Tony Jr. thinks he might want to be a barber.
___
Ed. note: If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction, know there are help and resources readily available to you. Visit the Alcoholics Anonymous website for more information.