Brenda Tillis will start cooking the red beans Friday morning.
A few hours later, after the beans have absorbed the spices and are just right, she will leave her home in mid-city New Orleans and take the prized dish to share with her grandson, Tony Zenon. A starting A-back on Georgia Tech’s football team, Zenon and the Yellow Jackets will be in the Crescent City to play at Tulane at 4 p.m. Saturday.
“I’m so excited,” Tillis said.
Tillis hasn’t seen Zenon play in person since he was “little speedy” as she used to call him, running around in youth football.
Zenon and his family left the city as part of a Hurricane Katrina caravan in 2005. They eventually settled in Albany.
Zenon still visits family in New Orleans from time to time, but Tillis said she doesn’t think she has seen him since Christmas.
So, the red beans will be Zenon’s treat.
Watching his face light up when he sees his favorite food, and then seeing him play on Saturday, is her’s.
Tillis, who is trying to find a Tech jersey to wear to the game, will be one of as many as 60 of Zenon’s family members who will be on hand. Zenon’s teammates have given him some of their tickets so that grandmothers, aunts, cousins, friends and others can be accommodated.
“It’s going to be good to have everyone there,” Zenon said. “But I’m going to take it as a normal game and try to play the best I can.”
The game may mean more than Zenon is letting on.
Even nine years after Zenon and his family left, he still talks about home three or four times a week, according to teammate Deon Hill.
“That’s all he talks about,” Hill said. “‘I wish I was back home’ and the food back home.”
Ahhh, the food: Beignets, red beans and rice, gumbo, jambalaya. Zenon loves them all.
He can get red beans in Atlanta at Popeye’s, but it’s not the same. That’s why Tillis is taking Zenon’s favorite dish to the team hotel Friday.
“The food, I miss the food,” he said.
But food and family will fall second to football Saturday.
After three years as a reserve, Zenon is a starter whose only goal is to win the ACC championship and earn a ring before he graduates.
He did his part in the season-opening win against Wofford on Saturday. He caught a 33-yard pass to set up Tech’s go-ahead field goal at the end of the first half and caught a fourth-and-5 pass on the opening drive of the third quarter.
“I thought he had a pretty good game on Saturday,” coach Paul Johnson said. “He made some good plays.”
Those were two nice moments for a player who has been in a deep rotation at A-back, in which Roddy Jones, Orwin Smith and Robert Godhigh have taken a lot of the snaps the past few years. Zenon said his goal during every practice and every game is to make a play.
“I can see that he’s extremely focused on playing with great effort, knowing his assignment, and playing with great technique,” A-backs coach Lamar Owens said. “It’s paying off for him the past few weeks, and hopefully he can keep that going.”
Red beans aside, there may be one more treat for Zenon, Tillis and the rest of his family.
Johnson said he may make him one of the team’s captains, an honor that his family members will get to see.
“That would be awesome to go out and lead the team,” Zenon said.
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