Eight-year-old Talor Battle was stuffed into his family’s 1992 Jeep Cherokee with five of his siblings on the outskirts of Albany, N.Y. His mother Denise had just spent her last bit of cash on a loaf of white bread and a package of cold cuts and was making sandwiches for the six kids.
It was a rough stretch for the family in May of 1997. They were living out of the Jeep. They had just moved out of the apartment of Denise’s former co-worker friend. The woman had four cats. Talor’s older brother Tracy was allergic to them. His 5-year-old brother Davante was afraid of them. It was a chaotic mess. They had to move out.
But their own house wasn’t yet ready to be moved into. Everything was in disarray. Talor’s stepfather Dan Buie had just begun an excursion to Europe to find a job playing basketball. He was in Bologna – the city in Italy. His wife was serving bologna to her kids.
“How ironic, right?” remembered Denise on Saturday with a laugh…