To that boy, Tybre Faw, the civil rights icon was not only a hero, but a personal friend.
The two met in Selma, Alabama, in March of 2018. We were there covering the annual civil rights pilgrimage that Lewis led when we saw Tybre standing outside a church where Lewis was attending a service. He held a sign that read, "Thank you Rep. John Lewis. You have shown me how to have courage."
When we talked to Tybre, we learned that he had asked his grandmothers to drive him seven hours from his Jefferson City home to Selma in the hopes of meeting the man mentioned in the books about the civil rights movement that the boy regularly checked out from the library and devoured.
We connected Tybre and his grandmothers to Lewis' staff and they brought him to the back entrance of the church where the congressman would be exiting.
Tybre's eyes welled up with tears the minute he saw Lewis, who came over, read the sign and hugged him as he spoke quietly to the boy who hung on every word. None of us who witnessed the meeting could keep from crying. Even Capitol Police officers there -- trained to be stoic -- were unable to hold back their tears.
It was one of the most powerful moments any of us had ever witnessed, and we all knew it.
'We can't afford this light to burn out ...'
We played video of that moment during one of our on-air reports Saturday morning after Lewis died, and Nathan Morris of the musical group Boyz II Men saw it, was moved to tears himself, and contacted us asking about Tybre.
We sent him the original story from March 2018, which showed Tybre not only meeting Lewis, but marching with him across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma and even going to Washington at Lewis' invitation to spend time on the floor of House of Representatives, where Tbyre decided he too wants to be a congressman one day.
Morris texted back after watching the story asking whether Tybre had a college fund, saying, "That boy has to be afforded the chance to be successful!"
The answer was no. Tybre is the only child of a single mother, whose grandmothers also play a big role in his upbringing.
We put Morris in touch with Annarino, Tybre's grandmother, who cried when she got the call and agreed to let Morris start a college fund for their grandson. Morris put up a GoFundMe page for Tybre's education.
In a lengthy post on that page, Morris wrote that Tybre is "a shining light in a dark time" and that "he wants to grow up and make a difference. He wants to be a congressman and follow in the footsteps of the late John Lewis."
"We can't afford this light to burn out before it has a chance to shine," Morris added.
Tybre's relationship with Lewis grows strong
Tybre's love of history -- especially the civil rights movement -- was born in third grade when his music teacher, Laura Evans, had her students put on a play about Martin Luther King Jr., who had gone to seminary school with her own father. She shared stories with her students that her father had told
