Tyrone Flowers had a message for those gathered for the Richard Allen Cultural Center and Museum’s Second Semi-formal Youth Banquet — be yourself, and don’t be afraid to pursue your own goals.
Flowers is the founder and president of Higher M-Pact, an organization based in Kansas City, Mo., that works to help high-risk urban youth succeed. He was speaking as part of the center’s banquet and dance.
The theme, “Who am I and who will I be? Let no man define who you are,” is one familiar to Flowers. Having spent an earlier part of his life in and out of different foster homes and detention centers and told he was “beyond parental control,” he said he eventually decided to go back to high school to finish up his education.
Two weeks short of donning his cap and gown as a popular high-school basketball player, Flowers said he was shot three times by a teammate — an incident that has left him in a wheelchair.
But since then, he said he graduated from Penn Valley Community College in Kansas City, Mo., and with honors from the University of Missouri-Columbia before he received a juris doctorate from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law.
Flowers said his experience of being told what he could and could not do in life has taught him a valuable lesson about the theme for the banquet.
“At the end of the day,” he told the audience at the Riverfront Community Center. “You’re going to have to define you.”
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