Editor’s note: On Monday, Arkansas State announced Blake Anderson has decided to take a leave of absence to be with his wife, Wendy, and family. Late Monday night, Wendy Anderson passed. She was 49.

JONESBORO, Ark. — Among maybe 50 photos on the wall in Arkansas State head coach Blake Anderson’s office, one jumps out.

It features two young girls standing in the walkway in front of their house, hands on their mouths and gasps on their faces. They’re the daughters of former defensive line coach Brian Early, and all around them are small sticks coming out of the ground. Atop each stick is a neon-colored Peep marshmallow.

They’ve been Peeped.

The night before Easter, Blake, his wife Wendy and their kids or some players or staff members stake out a few yards. They park a block away, dressed in black, and plant hundreds of Peeps. The next morning, kids find the surprise. It’s an idea the Andersons got at one of Blake’s previous coaching stops, where Wendy was a children’s minister.

“We leave a note that you’ve been Peeped,” Blake says now from behind his desk in the south end zone building at Centennial Bank Stadium.

Hours before explaining the Peeps prank from his office, Blake was on the field, finishing up the Red Wolves’ first practice of preseason camp. At the end of practice, a group of coaches and players kneeled and prayed for Wendy. Not long after, Arkansas State athletic director Terry Mohajir walked up to Blake and put his arm around him.

Wendy has been battling cancer that has spread through much of her body. At multiple times this year, Blake has been told she has only a few months to live. She’s still fighting, but this August day was a particularly tough one. After practice, Blake went home for a few hours to tend to her, before coming back for meetings.

A form of breast cancer was first discovered in spring 2017, but she fought back and was declared cancer-free later that year. It returned last fall and has continued to spread. Wendy has been in and out of the hospital and is now on oxygen.

“At this point, we need her body to fight, we need her immune system to kick in,” Blake says. “And we need God to step in in a big way.”

As that battle continues, football has arrived, pulling Blake away more often. He continues to coach, but a plan is in place if he needs to step away. New defensive coordinator Dave Duggan would take over head coaching duties.

“Dave’s more than ready,” Blake says. ”I can tell you what we’re doing on a Thursday, Week 10 of the season at 2:30 in the afternoon. We’re prepared. The players have been great, and I’ve been transparent with them, too. They know. They know what we’re up against. But we’re all ready for it because we communicate and we talk like a family. We keep everybody in the loop. I hope and pray that I don’t ever have to step away, that we can manage it and that she turns the corner and we get better. But I’m prepared for the worst, as well.”

Only four programs have made eight bowl appearances and won at least four conference championships over the past eight years: Alabama, Clemson, Oklahoma and Arkansas State. Two of those conference titles have come in Blake Anderson’s five seasons. The Red Wolves should contend for the Sun Belt championship again this season.

But it’s not the most important fight. That’s the one at home. And Blake is confident in the program and staff he’s built to keep everything going in the right direction in a community that his family has immersed itself in.

The Andersons started the Peep prank when Blake became the Arkansas State head coach in late 2013. It began with the families of staff members, and it later branched out to other people in the area. He’s always been a small-town guy, and it was something he knew the community would enjoy.

“Every Easter Sunday on the staff group text, there would be nine million pictures of kids,” former Arkansas State assistant and current UMass head coach Walt Bell says later.

This past Easter was the first time in years the Andersons couldn’t do it.

Blake Anderson was actually born in Jonesboro, though he doesn’t really remember the time. His parents frequently moved. His father’s job was to move to a town, recruit people to sell life insurance and then head to the next town. The family moved to Waco, Texas, when Blake was six months old and then to Hubbard, outside of Waco, a few years later. His parents, Scott and Donna, still live there today.

Blake and his other brother, Brian, played all kinds of sports. It was something to do while their father traveled. In high school, they’d play the first half of the football game and then perform in the halftime show with the marching band. Church was a big part of their lives, too. Growing up near Waco, much was devoted to the Baylor football team. Scott once wrote a song called “The Bears Are Back,” and the Anderson family sang it at Baylor pep rallies.

“It was on the radio and everything. It was very exciting,” Donna Anderson says in her thick Texas accent. Blake was a great singer, she says, until all the coaching as an adult made his own Texas voice much hoarser.

Following his dream, Blake enrolled at Baylor in 1987 to play football. But after two years, he transferred to Sam Houston State. It’s where he decided to become a coach. It’s also where he met Wendy.

They took a class together but didn’t actually get to know each other until a year later, when her sorority hosted a roller-skating function. Through connections from a teammate, the two went as friends. To the surprise of many there, Blake was a natural on his skates.

“I’ve grown up going to the skating rink, like every night, every week growing up,” he says. “I was amazed at how many bad skaters there were.”

He made an impression.

“By the end of the night, we’re holding hands, we’re talking, we sit around and talk for hours afterward,” he says. “She’ll tell you I played it too cool. That’s before cell phones. So I didn’t talk to her for like a week and a half after that. We were kind of getting busy with football. I just so happened to be driving from the stadium to my house, and it goes by her apartment.

“I just pulled in one day to see what she was up to. She’s like, ‘You almost screwed up. Cool is one thing, but this is too long.’ Then she asked me out again.”

Blake loved Wendy’s tenacity and competitiveness. She was a volleyball player and played intramural softball with Blake and his friends. She wasn’t afraid to stand up for herself and confront men.

“It just kind of like, man, she’s got something to her,” he says.

Blake was a few years ahead of Wendy in school, and they knew he’d be leaving to coach. They had to make a decision. The daughter of a high school football coach, Wendy knew a bit about that life.

Blake became a graduate assistant at Eastern New Mexico. They got engaged in the summer of 1992 and married that December. It had to be at that time of year, because Blake wouldn’t be on the road recruiting. The coaching life impacted the personal life, and it wouldn’t be the first time.

(Mark J. Rebilas / USA TODAY Sports)

Over the next decade, the Andersons moved from Eastern New Mexico to Howard Payne to Trinity Valley Community College to New Mexico to Middle Tennessee, where Blake was co-offensive coordinator/wide receivers coach. There have been even more moves since.

“Neither one of us knew exactly what we’re doing,” he says. “You don’t know you’re going to move to 12 different cities in seven different states and live in 20 different houses. Nobody plans for that crap to happen.”

By the time they arrived at Middle Tennessee in 2002 with three kids — daughter Callie and sons Coleton and Cason — their marriage was not in a good place. The demands of coaching were high. Blake was focused on moving up the ladder, working all day, going on the road all the time and traveling to all sorts of clinics. They resented each other, and she had every reason to, he says, because he wasn’t a good husband or father. He says he was living like a frat kid.

It finally came to a head in June 2005.

“I walked in and begged her to stay,” Blake says. “I said I’ll walk in and resign tomorrow if you’ll work on our marriage and let me rebuild our relationship with our kids and let me rebuild my relationship with Christ, because I’m not living the way I should.”

Wendy gave him another chance. The next morning, Blake went to Middle Tennessee head coach Andy McCollum’s office and resigned. It was right before recruiting camp season. The MTSU staff had 12 traveling camps planned. He told McCollum that if he left for the camps, Wendy wouldn’t be there when he got back.

“A lot of football coaches are addicts,” says Bell, who was one of Anderson’s MTSU receivers at the time. “We’re addicted to football, addicted to success and winning.”

The Andersons returned to Hubbard, Texas, where Blake ran his father’s life insurance business as Scott recovered from a heart attack. Blake was still recruiting and coaching, just with insurance agents instead of football players. Donna says he was so good that they planned for Blake to take over even when Scott regained his health.

He coached one of his son’s basketball teams. Blake and Wendy went through marriage counseling and spiritual consulting. He got back to being the person God told him to be, as Blake puts it. He didn’t know if he’d coach again. Some calls came, but they weren’t ready to get back in.

A year and a half after Blake stepped away, Louisiana Lafayette head coach Rickey Bustle called. Despite Blake being out of football for two seasons, Bustle wanted to talk to him about the offensive coordinator job. Wendy and Blake drove to Louisiana for the interview. On the drive back, before they reached the Texas state line, Bustle called and offered the job. The couple talked about it and prayed over it. If they were going to do this, he had to do it a different way.

“I promised her and I promised my family and I promised God that if you get me back in it, you put me back in and I’m gonna do it right,” he says.

Under Blake’s direction, the 2007 Ragin’ Cajuns became the Sun Belt’s first 3,000-yard rushing team. He was offered the quarterbacks coach job at Southern Miss under new head coach Larry Fedora. He had replaced Fedora as MTSU offensive coordinator, and the two knew each other from old Texas coaching circles.

“We had similar philosophies, and I had a lot of respect for the way he worked,” Fedora says. “I saw a lot of myself in him.”

So the Anderson family moved again. In Blake’s first season, redshirt freshman and former walk-on Austin Davis broke 15 school passing records. Blake was promoted to offensive coordinator in 2010. In 2011, the Golden Eagles went 12-2, won Conference USA and finished ranked in the top 20. Fedora accepted the head coaching job at North Carolina, and Anderson followed. They moved again.

The 2012 North Carolina offense finished No. 8 nationally in scoring and broke the school record for total offense. After the 2013 season, an even bigger opportunity came calling.

Terry Mohajir became athletic director Arkansas State in 2012. By the time the 2013 season ended, his alma mater was facing an unprecedented situation, looking for its fifth head coach in five years.

Steve Roberts was fired after a 4-8 season in 2010. Then Hugh Freeze, Gus Malzahn and Bryan Harsin each turned one successful head-coaching year in Jonesboro into the jobs at Ole Miss, Auburn and Boise State, respectively. John Thompson also interim-coached in two bowl games.

Blake Anderson wasn’t on Mohajir’s initial list, but Mohajir found his résumé, and he liked his success with quarterbacks. Mohajir pulled up hours of YouTube videos of Anderson giving chalk talks and coaching players. A former football player himself, Mohajir knew that part of the game. It was Anderson’s communication skills that stood out. Anderson’s offensive results and Texas ties were also important in a Texas border state at a school that needs to recruit outside of Arkansas. (The 2019 team has players from 22 states and three countries). He took the job, and the $3 million initial buyout was a signal he wouldn’t look to jump to a bigger program right away.

Fedora had advised Anderson to wait for the right head-coaching job, not any job. This was it. He implemented a staff culture that lived up to what he’d promised Wendy. Morning meetings started later so assistants could take their kids to school. Spring weekends were off. Assistants got plenty of vacation and were instructed not to stay late. Coaching little league was encouraged.

“He’s one of the best coaches I’ve worked for,” says cornerbacks coach Allen Johnson, who has been on staff since 2014. “Family guy, Christian guy, cares about the players and the coaches. He’s always going to put everybody first. He always preaches that we’re going to serve others. That’s the philosophy he’s brought.”

(Courtesy of Arkansas State)

Staff families and players were welcome at his house to enjoy the pool. The photo wall in his office includes many pictures of players and coaches’ families, along with his own.

“My dad died in 2008. Other than my father, Blake Anderson is probably the most important guy in my life,” says Bell, who was the offensive coordinator from 2014-15. “The coach I am, how I treat the guys that work with me, how I take care of players, relationships, accountability, he’s probably the most important person to me walking the planet right now. It’s how he treats people, how he lives, how much he invests in players. There’s not a better guy.”

Anderson inherited a winning program, but some issues had been covered up by bandages. Because of so much head-coaching turnover, the recruiting classes were often patched together late. Factoring in kids who didn’t make it to campus and transfers, only 55 of the 85 scholarship players had actually been recruited scholarship athletes. He liked some of the skill players, but there were holes on the lines and little depth.

“It’s not what I thought I took over,” Anderson says. “I don’t think anybody knew what five head coaches in five years would do to a program on that.”

The Red Wolves went 7-6 in his first season in 2014, and when Anderson walked in the door the following January, players were shocked. It was the first time their head coach was returning for a second season. Anderson had felt a sense of distrust during that first year, and he couldn’t blame them. Once he walked into that first meeting in 2015 for year two, the trust finally began to form.

Aided by an influx of two-year players and transfers to fix the roster, Arkansas State went 9-4 and 8-5 in the following two seasons, winning two Sun Belt championships with a 15-1 record in conference play.

With consistent success under Anderson, the infrastructure of the program has been reshaped. An indoor practice facility opened in 2014. The video board was replaced in 2014. The press box was renovated with luxury seating in 2015. Renovations last year added rock formations and waterfalls to the north end zone corners. A new 72,000-square-foot football operations building is set to open this month. Mohajir expects Anderson to get a bigger job one day, and the Arkansas State job is as appealing as it’s ever been.

“Our facilities are as good as any Power 5 school,” Mohajir says.

Anderson has set up the football program he always wanted. But the most important part of that foundation — family — faces the toughest fight right now.

The cancer discovery started with sunburn in spring 2017. Wendy had gone to a beach with their daughter Callie and some other girls. Wendy gets sunburned easily, and when putting on some aloe vera to cool it, she found a lump.

Tests revealed triple-negative breast cancer, located in a spot on the chest cavity where doctors couldn’t operate. Wendy was reluctant to try chemotherapy after seeing how it had weakened her aunt before her death, so the Andersons tried a more natural approach focused on dieting, along with two months of immunotherapy in Mexico. Blake was there for one of those months.

“It wasn’t anything crazy,” he says. “It was nutrition, diet, changing your lifestyle, changing what’s put your body and then a lot of just natural remedies and ways to try to get your body to fight the cancer basically, try to build your immune system.”

The treatment helped enough that doctors were eventually able to operate and remove the cancer right before the 2017 season. On Aug. 31, 2017, Blake announced that Wendy was cancer-free. Two days later, at the Red Wolves’ first game of the season at Nebraska, the opposing student section put up a banner that read “Get well soon, Wendy Anderson!” The Andersons still have the banner at their house.

Thank you @TheIronN on behalf of the Anderson family and all of Red Wolf Nation 🎀 pic.twitter.com/dx6QbdVYic — Arkansas State Football (@AStateFB) September 2, 2017

They were told there was a 50 percent chance the cancer would come back. But the 2017 season came and went. Then winter. Then spring. Then summer. No changes. Wendy was still eating healthy — no pesticides, no sugar. Whatever it took. She was cautious but enjoying life again.

The 2018 season came, and during a Week 3 trip to Tulsa, Wendy began coughing. Doctors thought it could be bronchitis, but the coughing continued. Later in the season, a chest X-ray finally brought the news: several large masses in her lungs. The cancer returned at Stage 4, and it was spreading quickly.

“This is not what it was like the first time,” Blake says. “She didn’t really look sick the first time. She didn’t do chemo. She didn’t do radiation the first time. So she really never looked sick. She did such a good job taking care of her body, that you wouldn’t even really notice she was sick. But this was different. It started to show really quickly that she was.”

Her condition progressively got worse after the Arizona Bowl in December. In January, Wendy suffered a life-threatening episode when five large masses were discovered in her brain. One had swollen to the point where it left Wendy unconscious, and she had to have brain surgery to relieve the pressure.

Blake gets emotional thinking about that moment.

“She had forgotten who any of us were, she didn’t know who her kids were,” he says. “She barely recognized me at all because of the swelling and pressure. It’s not operable. There’s too many tumors to take them out. So they put holes inside her head and relieved pressure of the two biggest ones.”

(Courtesy of Blake Anderson)

Despite an uncertain prognosis from doctors, her cognitive skills eventually came back as the pressure subsided following surgery. Doctors gave her two or three months to live, as radiation kept the brain tumors from growing further.

But then her lungs got worse, and she had to begin chemotherapy. Doctors didn’t think she’d make it through the summer. Around July 4, scans showed the cancer was now in the lungs, liver, bones, spleen and brain. All available treatments had been exhausted. While in New Orleans for Sun Belt Media Day last month, Wendy struggled and spent a week in the hospital. She’s now oxygen-dependent 24 hours a day. She was unable to participate in an interview.

“She is unbelievable, because she’s never quit fighting,” Blake says. “She’s never made any excuses. If you asked her right now that she still believes that she’s going to beat it, that she’s going to keep fighting, that God’s going to step in, she’s gonna beat it. She never ever wavered.

“The doctors will tell you that it doesn’t make sense. The way she fights that they just kind of threw the statistics out the window. She’s not supposed to be alive and she is. I don’t know how she could have done any better, but her body’s just failing on her. So we need God to step in in a big way or he’s going to take it home. And we know that.”

The community has stepped up to help. That same community that’s been Peeped. Friends deliver food two days per week so Blake doesn’t have to cook. Their two oldest kids have moved back home. A girl from their church helps during the day when Blake is at practice. Mohajir’s wife, Julie, helps organize meals and takes Wendy to treatment. Everywhere Blake looks, he finds help. A group of wives of his former coaching colleagues visited in the spring to see Wendy.

“To do anything they could do to help in the moment and lift some spirits,” says Fedora, whose wife Christi was in the group. “They’re all a pretty close group and stay in contact. They’re all praying for Wendy and the family.”

Blake tears up when asked how the kids are handling it.

“Like me, scared to death,” he says.

He also praises his players, coaches and administration for the support. Players constantly send messages for her, and the group held a birthday party.

“I just want to uplift him any way I can,” senior receiver Omar Bayless says of his coach.

Blake’s parents have been unable to come up to Jonesboro, as Scott is also on oxygen battling a lung disease. Throughout recent battles off the field, Blake also had an overhaul of his staff on it. Several offensive coaches weren’t retained. After running the offense himself over the past two years, Blake wanted someone with whom he has a better connection as he steps back into a CEO role. That’s new offensive coordinator Keith Heckendorf, who worked with Blake at North Carolina.

In total, Arkansas State has seven new assistants, plus a new head strength coach. But most of these coaches worked with Anderson elsewhere, creating a familiarity. It’s that familiarity and trust that is needed now more than ever. Duggan, who worked with Anderson at Southern Miss and has NFL Europe head-coaching experience, will take over if the head coach needs to step away. He hopes he won’t have to.

“We’re doing everything we can to help him in any way,” Heckendorf says. “You always ask what you need. He says to just keep doing what you’re doing. You try to handle the football part of it, each side of the ball and allow him to focus on his family.”

Anderson splits his time. Wendy doesn’t need him around the house all the time, and she wants some time for herself. She doesn’t want to be a distraction for the team or the story of the season. She just wants success for them. For Blake, the football work is a release, though she never leaves his mind. Some days are worse than others.

“I just wish I could keep her from hurting,” he says, “and I can’t do crap about it other than go home, give her a back rub and give her some meds and hope she can get some sleep.”

When the Andersons first arrived in Jonesboro, she would introduce herself as just “Wendy,” because she didn’t want to be treated differently as the head coach’s wife. Through the ups and downs, they believe they’ll beat this latest battle and be a coaching family for another 15 years.

“I’ve never seen a couple have so much faith and so much willpower as I’ve seen these two,” an emotional Mohajir says. “Wendy’s still fighting every single day. It’s amazing. It’s inspiring … It’s a beautiful situation that you see two people act in the manner they do, with so much inspiration and desire. You just don’t see that every single day until you actually have loved ones go through it. It’s been a challenge.”

Once the boy who sung in church as a kid, Blake Anderson has leaned on his faith through all of this, and the prayers continue.

“It’s how we get through it,” he says. “Without the strength of belief that there’s something better in store for her if God chooses to take her home, without the strength of the Holy Spirit to get through days when you don’t want to get out of bed, when you’re watching her and she can’t breathe or she’s hurting and you can’t do anything to help, there’s only one place. That comes from our faith.”

As Blake and Wendy fight this battle, the Red Wolves will move into their new operations building any day now. His new office will have much larger walls. More room for photos. More room for family.

(Top photo: Courtesy of Blake Anderson)