Minn. Businessman Helps Get Home For Heroic Football Coach
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Frank Hall is a football coach, and he lives by the creed that the game makes better people.
"I think the country could use some time in the locker room and learn how to care for each other," Hall said.
But what has defined him is one day in 2012. He was overseeing a study hall when a gunman entered his school, Chardon High School in Ohio. He killed three students and seemed intent on doing much more.
Hall did not run from the gunman -- he ran at him so he could not fire another round.
"I was able to run at him and get him disoriented," Hall said. "And he runs out of the cafeteria where I was at, and a brief moment I think, 'He's gone, he's out of our school,' but then I realize he went down a hallway full of classrooms. And, you know, that brief moment of pause becomes terror to think he could get into a classroom what would happen."
Hall was able to chase the gunman out of the building.
"That reaction that day was part of just being an athlete. Just being someone who was coached hard in his life and knowing that there was this problem and situation that need to [be taken] care of," Hall said.
His story was reported on "60 Minutes," and that is where Minnesotan Tip Enabek first found Hall.
Enabek played football at Faribault High School and the University of North Dakota. He related to Hall. He is also a successful businessman as a developer in a five-generation family company. He reached out to Frank.
"Courage, commitment, focus and effort, pursuit with reckless abandon. And I said, 'You exhibit that in every phase of your life,'" Enabek said.
Enabek found something else about Hall: he and his wife have adopted nine children.
"We're blessed beyond any means," Hall said.
They have been up to meet Enabek and his family, and it became apparent to the builder. Hall's family had outgrown their three bedroom, one bathroom house in Ohio.
Enabek might not have a beard, but he has got some of Santa in him. He does not want credit, but we made him tell a little about how he helped "organize" his company to help lead the way, so Hall, his wife and nine children were able to move into a new house on six acres of land this week.
"They got to have a place to live and a place so they feel comfortable, and so the parents aren't just going crazy because they only have space and all of this," Enabek said. "We said, 'Let's figure out if we can make a difference in their lives.'"
The football coach and the old-school businessman have developed quite a relationship.
"He's kind of gotten to be like my third kid," Enabek said.
Hall is still coaching football, and he has started a foundation on school safety.
"We weren't going to let evil win that day, and we honored the three young men who lost their lives that day, and we continue to get into the fight to make our schools safer," Hall said.
The impact he had because of that tragic day extended all the way to Minnesota.
"I said, 'Frank, don't you worry about this … don't be embarrassed about it because you've given us and the people that you've come and talked to here, you've given us so much more than we could ever give you,'" Enabek said. "And if any of my seven grandkids catches the seed of what he's done, it's worth whatever help we could give him."
