The town of Canton sits in the northwest corner of upstate New York. About 10 miles north, the St. Lawrence River divides the United States from Canada. But Canton very much has the feel of a small Canadian town. “There’s like one Walmart, and that’s where you get your food or whatever the hell you need for your house,” Greenway said. “It’s cold as hell. There’s a lot of farmland, so a lot of people hunt, and everyone plays hockey. That’s how I got into it.” The town is also predominantly white. A 2015 United States census report listed Canton’s population at 6,665 and 4.7 percent black.

“We spoke about color a lot because primarily where we came from, the majority here are white people,” said Shannon Sullivan, Greenway’s mother. “I made that very known to them. We spoke about it openly in the house, about the background, and don’t have the stereotype of what people think.” Canton is where Greenway grew up, along with brother James or “J.D.,” 434 days his junior. The boys, as Shannon refers to them, were inseparable as children. They shared a bedroom, though J.D. said most of their time was spent outside, playing one sport or another. “Him and I just always went at it, you know?” Jordan said. “That’s probably why we’re a little bit more competitive now after growing up. Him and I always had some good battles one on one, whether it was in the rink or at the house, whatever the case was.” House rules were set, according to Sullivan, but “they’re two boys, right?” Sullivan, much like Jordan, has a laid-back personality and was lenient when a wrestling match broke out or a hockey puck sailed over the couch. “They knew when I was serious and when I wasn’t,” she said. “They were very good boys, but they were boys; they did what they were supposed to do as boys.”

Shannon Sullivan

J.D. never took losing well, and knows it. He was the better lacrosse player, while Jordan was better at hockey, both on the ice and in video games. J.D. had a short temper, and brotherly competitions, like who could string together the most accurate forehand Frisbee tosses, were never taken lightly. “Whenever I would lose, I would lose focus and just try to beat him up or pick a fight, which I would always get my ass kicked again,” J.D. said. “It was never a win for me.” There was one time, though, when J.D. got so angry he popped Jordan in the face. Neither brother remembers what precipitated it. “When you hurt your brother or your family you realize, ‘Wow, I kind of messed up.’ He had to go and lay down on the couch to regroup a little bit,” J.D. said. “I take pride in that.” The boys were very close to their mother growing up, but also spent a lot of time with grandparents, aunts and uncles, with Sullivan sometimes working as many as three jobs to help support the family. Jordan and J.D.’s biological father wasn’t in the picture, leaving shortly after J.D. was born. “He had his own problems,” Shannon said. “I had them very young. It just wasn’t there. It’s something that just happened, and he wasn’t going to stick around. He just had his own personal problems that I won’t go into detail about, but it wouldn’t have even been productive to have him around the boys. Let’s put it that way.”