What does it mean to be so close with someone that they’re like family, and what would you do to make sure that person was safe and happy? That’s what Amanda and Alex Constantine contemplated in October 2020, when their good friend Tony Edmonds, 29, lost his mom to multiple health complications.
Tony is autistic and requires assistance with daily life — he doesn’t drive or cook. He also needs an advocate to represent him when he’s faced with bigger decisions like how to spend his money, where to live and work and what activities would be healthy for him.
Alex and Amanda, who had known Tony for years, grappled with how they could play a role in his future. They knew his dad had died when Tony was in high school, and he had no siblings. “Tony’s mom was sick for a while,” says Alex. “We knew there wasn’t a really clear plan. We cared very deeply for Tony and wanted him to be in a good situation for the rest of his life.”
Alex and Tony have been practically inseparable since their high school days in Bucyrus, OH, where they and Amanda grew up. Tony first captured Alex’s attention when Alex became an aide in Tony’s gym class. Then he’d see Tony around their town of about 11,000 people. “The first time I saw him outside of school, Tony just sprinted away from me. He played hard to get,” Alex jokes. Alex loved Tony’s sense of humor and the fact that once Tony got to know him, he always made Alex feel special: “If you’re friends with Tony, you feel like you’re the most important person in the world.”
Over the years, their friendship deepened as Tony started hanging out with Alex and his friends. They went to a sports bar together, attended basketball games and never missed the Bucyrus Bratwurst Festival, one of Tony’s annual favorites. (Bucyrus is known as “the Bratwurst Capital of America.”) After attending Ohio State University for a bachelor’s degree in business, Alex returned to Bucyrus, where Tony had bonded with Alex’s college
friends after visits home. “We had a good time,” Tony says. “We’d just hang out, chill out.”
Alex and Amanda began dating in 2013, when Alex was a college junior and Amanda was in her first year at Bowling Green State University. Amanda, who already knew Tony from high school and from the Bucyrus bowling league, became closer to him as she spent more time with Alex. She says she was “kind of a third wheel” at first because Alex and Tony had such a strong friendship. But it didn’t take long for Amanda and Tony to become great friends too — Tony’s infectious laugh punctuated every conversation. “He is the party,” Amanda says.
Tony was an usher at Amanda and Alex’s wedding, and Amanda and Tony choreographed and performed a dance to “We’re All in This Together” from High School Musical. “We still get comments about how heartwarming and fun it was,” says Amanda.
“We had a good time back in 2019,” says Tony, reminiscing about wedding guests circling the trio as they danced.
That year, the couple hit upon an intriguing idea: What if they “adopted” Tony? They knew he had relatives in his extended family, but Alex and Amanda wanted to explore ways to increase Tony’s independence. Plus, the couple were keenly aware that Tony’s older relatives would eventually pass away, leaving him in a bind yet again. As his legal guardians, Alex and Amanda could help Tony make good health, housing and financial decisions.
As luck would have it, Amanda’s uncle had experience as a guardian, so she was somewhat familiar with what was involved. Still, they quickly learned that the process of establishing guardianship would take a fair amount of legwork. The couple made some calls and spoke with Amanda’s uncle to get his take. He referred them to the Crawford County Board of Developmental Disabilities (CCBDD); they then connected with Becky Teynor, Tony’s service support administrator. Along with CCBDD, Mid Ohio Guardianship Services, an organization that matches people who want to be guardians with people who need them, covered the court fees associated with their applying for legal guardianship of Tony.
In October 2020, Alex and Amanda were granted temporary guardianship, and Tony began splitting his time between living with them in their apartment in Columbus, OH, and staying at Alex’s parents’ house in Bucyrus so he could be close to his job working in packaging through Waycraft, a company that serves individuals with developmental disabilities.
The transition period was challenging for all three. “It changed the dynamic of our friendship,” says Amanda. “We’d always just hung out and had a good time, and then it turned into something more. We had to do things that were a little more serious.”
And between COVID-19 and the recent death of his mom, Tony’s routines had already been severely disrupted. Amanda and Alex wanted to make sure he had the resources available to him to live independently both in the short term and later on with as little upheaval as possible.
“I didn’t know this was going to happen to me,” says Tony. Asked how he stayed resilient through difficult loss, he says, “It’s hard to figure it out.”
Alex and Amanda were also attuned to the fact that they’d never had to deal with loss of the same magnitude as Tony now had — twice. “We could empathize with it, but we didn’t know what that was like,” Alex says. “We’d never experienced something like that.”
Filing for indefinite legal guardianship required background checks and other paperwork, Tony’s legal consent and a sign-off from his primary care physician. If the couple were granted full guardianship, they would be required to complete training courses focused on helping Tony live as unrestricted a life as possible.
While Alex and Amanda worked through the steps of petitioning for guardianship, they also looked into permanent options for Tony’s living arrangements, since they knew they couldn’t all live in the couple’s small apartment forever. Amanda came across other disabled adults on TikTok whose channels offered practical advice about independent living with a disability. That was when Alex and Amanda helped Tony find a Broken Arrow licensed group home, where he now lives family-style with three housemates. Tony’s living expenses are paid through his income from Social Security and his jobs, which also covers groceries.
Coincidentally, Tony’s Broken Arrow home is walking distance from where Amanda grew up. While helping Tony move in, Amanda realized that she’d spent her entire life walking by the house, waving to Tony’s now-housemates.
In November 2020, it became official: Alex and Amanda were granted permanent legal guardianship of Tony. “We were so relieved that the process was over, but a little overwhelmed by the changes to come,” says Amanda.
As Tony’s guardians, Alex and Amanda are responsible for his housing and living arrangements, helping him with issues like making medical decisions, organizing the logistics of when and where he can hang out with friends and deciding when it’s OK to take a day off work. They encourage him to follow Broken Arrow’s guidelines on things like completing chores, abiding by a curfew and respecting housemates and the Direct Support Professionals (DSPs) who work there. As guardians of his estate, they help him make both small financial decisions, such as how much money to take with him when he goes out, and larger ones, like whether or not he should start investing.
In fact, Alex and Amanda have already helped Tony grow his savings through deposits to his STABLE account, an investment engine that allows individuals who receive government benefits to save and invest without losing access to their benefits because of resource limits.
Luckily, most of the logistics of Tony’s care can be handled from afar. By June 2021, Amanda and Alex had moved to New York City, and most of Tony’s other friends had spread out across Ohio and around the country. “It’s hard not seeing all my friends,” Tony says. But he finds ways to feel close even at a distance.
He is an avid collector of greeting cards and often cuts out the personalized messages from the cards his friends send him. “My mom used to do the Christmas cards every year, and now she’s gone and I’m taking over,” explains Tony. Keeping his mom’s traditions alive is one of the ways in which he likes to remember her.
Amanda and Alex make it a priority to visit him regularly, and Tony came to see them in New York City in October 2021, shortly after his birthday. He has a joint 30th birthday planned at a water park with a mutual friend later this year. And the three have a group text with a larger group of friends and family — Tony is often the one who chimes in first.
“He’s the glue that holds us together,” says Amanda. “For years he’s been at Christmases, Thanksgivings, birthday parties. Both of our families welcome him with open arms.”
Though Amanda and Alex have legal power and are the ones who help Tony make decisions and connect him with resources, they both agree that they wouldn’t be able to do this without their community.
Many in the town of Bucyrus love Tony, including friends from high school and college, former teachers from their high school and Alex’s and Amanda’s parents, and they all pitch in to help with tasks like taking Tony grocery shopping and to appointments. Tony has a standing date to play Uno with Alex’s parents, whom he calls Mom and Dad.
Though guardianship has added a seriousness to their friendship, the trio still can’t stop laughing when they’re together. Their friendship has evolved into a bond for life. “Everyone knows how special Tony is to us,” says Amanda. “If you’re part of our life, you’re part of Tony’s life too.”
