Introduction by Zana Kennedy
With countless walkouts, equity clubs and a mural of students involved in the Civil Rights movement, it is safe to say that Lawrence High School takes pride in its diversity.
However the question arises: How much is this reflected in our history? In 2021, The Budget took on a project to answer this very question by taking a deeper look at our school’s Hall of Honor, but quickly discovered it did not reflect the diversity in our school’s history.
After in-depth research, students nominated three people of color: Leonard Monroe; a decorated Air Force veteran, John Spearman Sr; one of the first Black school board members in USD 497, and Debra Green; a significant LHS teacher. In October 2023, both Green and Spearman were inducted.
In celebration of Black History Month, we pick up where the project left off by continuing to nominate people of color who made significant contributions to Lawrence High, the Lawrence community, or the rest of the world after their graduation. Before graduating, Tessa Collar wrote two more features about Spearman’s sons who continued his work of advocating for civil rights.
We wanted to continue this project by introducing a new batch of nominees. Among them are the Harvey brothers, who will be submitted for induction. Placing the stories of these nominees side by side provides a perspective from two generations with the Spearmans, who got to witness the impact their work had on society, and the Harveys, who could only dream that their work would prevail on to the next generation. Additionally, we covered Thomas W. Henderson who served as the first Black member of the Lawrence school board, who will also be submitted for induction.
Each of their contributions were important to advancing racial equality in Lawrence.
Fighting for justice in their fields, the Harveys took initiative
In sports medicine and law, the Harveys took the fight for justice with them.
By Zana Kennedy
The Harvey brothers were never able to see the extent of their success.
The odds were stacked against them. Their mother was sold as chattel at birth and escaped slavery only a year before the end of the Civil War settling on property on the edge of Lawrence. While this town was widely known as “the symbolic capital of free Kansas,” Lawrence was just another town where slavery was replaced by segregation in a country where racism never ceased to exist.
However, Frederick, Sherman and Edward Harvey’s mother refused to watch the color of their skin dictate the rest of their lives, and she was determined to give them an education.
“She was very prominent in making sure that her children [were] going to have a future, whether that be farming or whether that be other opportunities,” said Edward Harvey’s relative Jelani Ragins, a 2021 graduate. “They all had a very close relationship with their mother.”
Unfortunately, segregation crept into the brother’s lives at an early age. Lawrence schools were segregated, leading Rebecca Harvey and her husband David Harvey to send their children to a rural integrated school in Blue Mound, Kansas. Although inconvenient, it provided more opportunities than the city’s segregated Black school did in a church basement.
Without laws rooted in racism, the Harveys could have easily been LHS alumni. Although the Harveys did not attend Lawrence High School, they lit a fire advocating for civil rights that would eventually lead to the end of segregated education. This started with Sherman Harvey.
Sherman knew that the justification for racial inequality was weak.
“The breaking down of prejudice is the great end to be attained; money, education and morality are the means by which this end must be accomplished,” Sherman wrote in The American Citizen Topeka newspaper. He was determined to break into this system.
After growing up seeing the school on the hill from a distance, Sherman became the first of his brothers to pursue an education at the University of Kansas starting in 1803. During his time at KU, he was not only the first African American to play baseball at the University, where he lettered on the undefeated team of 1889, but also the first African American from Kansas to graduate from KU. In all of his accomplishments, Sherman remained modest.
“He was just an average student who made the grades and had failed in no subject during the course,” Sherman reflected in his memoir, but he also knew that “education meant a new world of opportunities.”
Barriers in Lawrence were beginning to break down. After graduating in 1889, Sherman was appointed teacher of a group of Black students at New York Elementary School and was eventually promoted to principal at Lincoln School, which served Black students. However, he was able to make even larger strides when he was elected Douglas County Clerk from 1893-1897 on the Republican ticket, a possibility Sherman never considered.
“From a small boy reading his father’s ballots for him, he became interested in politics,” Sherman recalled in his memoir. “But with no thought of being a candidate for office.”
On the brink of the Spanish-American war of 1898, Sherman was not intent on joining the service. Yet as a new Kansas African-American regiment, known as the 23rd, started to gather, he was encouraged by the people of his hometown to not only join but captain their regiment. The 23rd was called to action 1898, and although the war ended that August, the regiment was sent to Cuba to guard Spanish prisoners during the winter of 1898-1899. After this final service, Sherman was discharged with honors.
Sherman knew there was much to come for the town on the hill, but war had given him a world of opportunities, including the chance to join an army regiment sent to the Philippine islands. To do this, he had to earn a license to practice law. In a year and a half, Sherman earned his law degree and began using his experience as a clerk to successfully pass the Kansas Bar Exam. He operated a successful law practice in the Philippines for 19 years before returning to the US.
Frederick Harvey was the eldest of his brothers and attended Kansas University from 1888-1892. Aspiring to become a doctor, Harvey studied pre-medicine courses but was also an outstanding athlete earning a letter in baseball on the 1890-1891 team. Frederick’s pursuit to become a doctor at KU was unfortunately cut short. KU’s medical school remained segregated, forcing him to go out of state to Meharry Medical School in Nashville, Tennessee. However, Harvey took his medical degree beyond the constraints of the hospital, practicing as a regiment surgeon in the 23rd Kansas regiment with his brother during the Spanish-American War.
Edward Harvey was the final piece of the Harvey legacy foundation. Although he also lettered in baseball in 1890-91, he became more involved then his brothers in athletics, also becoming the first African American football player at KU. In college, Edward spent two years serving as a secretary to Congressman Justin D. Bowersock in Washington, DC, but after his father’s passing he returned to Lawrence, where he made the real change. Edward took several positions in the community, from secretary of the Douglas County Farmer’s Institute to serving as a school board member for Blue Mound High School. However, this is where the Harveys saw progress start to come to a screeching halt.
At the turn of the 20th century, the Black population in Lawrence began to dwindle after the closure of a barbed wire factory. Violence and lynching of Black people increased.
As a disproportionate focus on Black crime rose, Frederick wrote a letter to highlight the inequity.
“We have for more than fifty years played our part in the industrial, social, and moral development of this community,” Frederick wrote. “Our brain and brawn have done no little to bring Lawrence to her present delectable height.”
Frederick also advocated for the American poet and social activist Langston Hughes. As a student in Lawrence, Hughes was expelled for writing “Jim Crow Row” about the segregated row for Black students. Frederick marched Hughes and his peers back to school and ensured the boys returned to class.
The biggest blow to the Harvey brothers was the decision to resegregate athletics at KU. By 1914, all Black people had been banned from KU athletics. All three Harvey brothers had participated in integrated athletic teams. This was a personal fight for them. Sherman joined a committee to protest racial discrimination on campus. Edward went a step further and wrote a letter to KU’s board administration, demanding an explanation from Chancellor Ernest Lindley.
“Now if these things are true, and I think they are, is it fair? Has not the Negro student the same right to show his prowess on the athletic field as the white student?” Edward wrote. “Why have conditions changed? The Negro formerly participated in athletics and always with credit to his school and to himself.”
Although Lindley responded within a few days, he avoided addressing the subject. The brothers visited the chancellor in one final attempt to change the athletic department’s trajectory but to no avail.
Frederick was the first of his brothers to die in 1923, the last Black physician in Lawrence for the next couple of decades. Sherman died only a decade later in 1934. Both died without seeing another Black athlete at KU. Edward settled down to start a family. He continued to attend KU football games until his death in 1953. However, the Harvey brothers’ legacy did not end with their deaths. Even the knowledge of these accomplishments still inspires the Harvey lineage today.
Right before Edwards’s death, his niece Debra Green was born. Born in the era of civil rights activism, Green would achieve much in her time. She followed in her uncle’s footsteps of seeking justice but in a classroom setting, becoming one of the most beloved teachers at the once-segregated school of Lawrence High.
At the tail end of the Harvey’s lives arose a new family in Lawrence, the Spearmans. The Spearmans advocated for civil rights and some even served on the USD 497 board of education.
Although society is no longer segregated, Edwards’s family remembers their relatives who fought for equality in athletics, education and more.
“I know [Edward] went to KU, broke the color barrier of him becoming the first African American football player on KU’s team, [and] I learned that at a very young age, so that always inspired me,” Ragins said. “It’s OK to be uncomfortable and sometimes it’s going to take that level of being uncomfortable to make changes.”
A life seeking justice
Graduate led sit-in where students pushed for changes at LHS.
By Tessa Collar
Lawrence High can thank Michael Spearman– and others that have continued the fight for equity– for helping the school become the inclusive, diverse place that it is today.
Spearman helped lead a sit-in in 1970 for more rights and representation for Black students, more Black teachers and the creation of an African-American history course. Following his time at Lawrence High, Spearman went on to have a strong impact in other communities, serving as a public defender from 1983-1993 and a judge in Seattle from 1993 until his retirement in 2018.
“Having the privilege of being a judge is probably one of the things I am most proud of,” Spearman said. “The thing that I learned is that the most important part is not the authority that you have, it’s the trust that people place in you in that position.”
While at Lawrence High, Spearman was an active student, involved in debate, track, gymnastics and Lawrnece High’s Black Student Union. Spearman was also the 1970 state champion on the horizontal bars.
Growing up, Michael Spearman’s greatest inspirations were his parents, John Spearman Sr. and Vernell Spearman. He credited them with providing support for their family as well as influencing the community with their leadership.
“[John Spearman Sr.] found the time to just encourage us in all of our sporting activities,” Spearman said. “I don’t know that he ever missed a single event when we were competing in gymnastics or track or any of those events.”
Spearman and his siblings could always depend on their father to stand up for them to anyone.
“If there were any incidents, where we were being treated unfavorably based on race, he was always strong and came to our defense,” Spearman said. “He would take on anybody, he didn’t care if you were the principal, the head of the company where we had our summer job or whatever. He would stand and defend what he thought was right, no matter what, no matter what the obstacle was.”
In 1970, when Spearman was a senior at Lawrence High, the Black Student Union made a list of demands of LHS administration. When these demands weren’t responded to, the BSU organized the sit-in to make their voices heard.
“One of our main goals was really to get an African American teacher, and to get a course in African American history to begin being taught there,” Spearman said. “So not just we could, as African Americans, learn about that history, but so that everybody could learn about it. And just the idea that if everyone learned about it, it really just sort of changed the way that people looked at each other
Spearman emphasized the lack of inclusion of Black history in courses taught in Lawrence at the time.
“There’s just so much growing up where the contributions that Back folks had made to, not just Kansas, but to the United States as a whole as to the development of our country that really just wasn’t not part of our education,” Spearman said. “We just really had a thirst to know more about what we had contributed, and what our forefathers had contributed to this country.”
Michael Spearman went on to attend Brown University, graduating with a degree in political science in 1974.
While at Brown, Spearman was the president of an organization called the United African People. This group influenced Spearman’s decision to work as a union organizer at an oil tool manufacturing plant in Houston, TX after graduating college.
“I became a union steward and tried to organize workers and fight for higher pay, better working conditions,” Spearman said. “And it sort of renewed my interest in going to law school.”
Michael Spearman went on to attend New York University for law school, graduating in 1981. Spearman also completed a fellowship program at Georgetown University Law School following his time at NYU.
An internship in Seattle was particularly impactful for Spearman, changing his plans from becoming a labor lawyer to pursuing a career as a public defender instead.
Spearman worked as a public defender for 10 years in Seattle and became head of the King County felony division before he left that position to work as a Federal Public Defender in 1993.
In the mid-1980s, Spearman met fellow public defender Michael Trickey in Seattle. Trickey reflected on the strength of his colleague and friend.
“He has a very powerful sense in an understated way of a commitment to racial justice and racial equality as well as the overall defense of the underdog,” Trickey said. “It’s not easy being a public defender and he made a career of it before he became a judge.”
Despite the difficulty of serving as a judge, Spearman maintained a strong sense of self throughout his career.
“He’s never been a strident person,” Trickey said. “He’s forceful, but not overbearing, and just gets along with everybody. That’s a rare skill, particularly as a judge.”
Michael Spearman was a member of the Sentencing Guidelines Commission for the State of Washington from 1995-2004. Spearman discussed the changes he was able to help make while a part of the commission.
“I was able to try to make changes and was successful to some degree to make some changes in the law,” Spearman said. “For example, trying to create the first time offender waiver for drug offenders, which had been initially there … there was a first time offender waiver but then drug offenders were made ineligible for it, but we were able to get that reinstated.”
Although changes were made, Spearman emphasized the difficulties of serving as a judge during the war on drugs.
“One of the most difficult parts of being a judge, especially a trial judge, was that I was in the criminal department at a time in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the critical war on drugs was at its highest levels,” Spearman said. “The number of African American kids, and I do mean kids, who are 16, 17, 18 years old, who were arrested.
“Sometimes [they had] serious drug issues, but a lot of times, they were just petty, minor, small amounts of drugs, and they were just addicts trying to get by. But nonetheless, they were charged with felonies.”
Spearman discussed the strong impact felony convictions can have, particularly on young people.
“Whatever promise those kids might have had, was really derailed with a felony, you get a felony conviction and you serve prison time,” Spearman said. “It’s hard to get your life back on track after that, and so that was probably one of the most difficult times for me to serve as a judge.”
According to Richard Jones, a federal prosecutor at the time he met Spearman and currently a Senior United States district judge in Seattle, Washington, Spearman always came up at the top of ratings of judges and the King County Superior Court.
“Michael always lived by the code that ethics is what you do when nobody’s watching, and he always had a profound sense of what ethics was supposed to mean, and fairness and justice was supposed to mean,” Jones said.
While working on hearings on police misconduct, Spearman ensured that same fairness and code of ethics to all.
“That has to be one of the toughest jobs in the city,” Jones said. “Michael took that on willingly…I can tell you that African Americans in our community, and just the general public, felt comfortable with Michael handling the case, because they knew they would have their opportunity for a fair hearing.”
Spearman discussed the importance of following the law while also trying to do the right thing, and his efforts throughout his judicial career to make that happen.
“I just appreciate so much the confidence that people place in you that you will find a way to make that happen,” Spearman said. “I’ve always tried to live up to that promise and I’m sure I haven’t always succeeded but I think I always tried my best to do that.”
From civil rights to healthcare, alum creates change
LHS experience included advocating for students’ rights before finding broad success.
By Tessa Collar
Described as a visionary by friends and colleagues, one of John Spearman Jr.’s major accomplishments is the founding of Global Health Initiatives. The program helped train healthcare professionals and build up emergency response health systems in developing nations.
While Spearman has worked across the world– and specifically in Maryland, throughout the Midwest and in Phoenix, Arizona– his roots are here in Lawrence. Born in January of 1950 in Lawrence, KS, Spearman has a long history of activism for Black rights in the Lawrence community and went on to have a successful career as a hospital executive.
When Spearman was young, he was an important part of protests for an integrated swimming pool in Lawrence, along with his parents, John Spearman Sr. and Vernell Spearman.
Spearman discussed the ways he and other teenagers contributed to discussions surrounding the issue.
“The thing I appreciated, they always asked for the youth perspective, so anything that I wanted to say, people like Vanessa Collins wanted to say, I mean, we always had an opportunity to say it,” Spearman said.
The city of Lawrence held hearings during this time to respond to the tensions surrounding the lack of a public swimming pool, at which Spearman and others his age spoke.
“We would go to those hearings and make our voices heard at those hearings,” Spearman said. “We were sometimes a little more radical and what we wanted to do, than the parents were willing to go, but they were always backing us up. ”
Although there was no organized Black Student Union while John Spearman Jr. attended Lawrence High School, he and others involved in protests for more Black rights laid the foundation for the BSU that formed soon after.
Spearman emphasized several teacher’s impacts on his life through their promotion of inclusion.
He said they “were progressive in seeing the need for diversity and inclusion and equity at that time…they worked to make that happen.
“And those things changed my life,” Spearman said. “I’ve never forgotten that part of high school.”
As class valedictorian in 1968, Spearman also spoke at his graduation ceremony. Following his time at Lawrence High, Spearman attended the University of Kansas where he became the president of KU’s Black Student Union.
Spearman said his objective as president “was to figure out, ‘how do you hold all these competing schools of thought together in order for us to make achievements?’ It was very tense at times, but we were able to do it, we were able to maintain our unity.”
Spearman didn’t graduate from KU, and instead went on to work at universities throughout the Midwest to help students organize Black Student Unions.
“My job was to work with them to help them understand, how to define how they saw their challenges,” Spearman said, “how to define potential proposals and how to negotiate their way through a power structure that was going to be very difficult and probably very resistant to giving them what they wanted.”
Michael Spearman noted his brother’s commitment to improving the world around him.
“Trying to make the world a better place became more important to him for a while than continuing in college and getting his degree and I thought that was a pretty courageous thing to do,” Michael Spearman said.
John Spearman Jr. went on to attend SUNY, graduating in 1989 with a degree in labor and industrial relations. Spearman earned his MBA from Loyola University Chicago in 2000.
Beginning in 1997, Spearman held significant leadership roles in various departments at the University of Maryland Medical Center, holding the position of Director of Administration, Shock Trauma from 1998-2000 and serving as Vice President for the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center from 2000-2009.
In the early 2000s, Spearman started the international program Global Health Initiatives to expand shock trauma work across the globe. Spearman worked with Maryland Medical Center coworker Gretchen Swimmer to initiate the program, eventually completing work with communities in China, Shanghai, Beijing, Brazil, India and South Africa.
“He’s a big visionary,” Swimmer said. “He felt that shock trauma is a very world renowned institution, and that we could do more things globally.”
One of the initiatives’ most prominent projects, lasting 2-3 years, was helping to create a trauma system in Rio in preparation for the Olympics.
“That was our biggest break, because we had a contract with them to help them prepare for those two events,” Swimmer said. “That was something I think [Spearman] was very proud of because we ended up working with the secretary of health, and all of his administrators, and then we met with the governor of Rio.”
Swimmer discussed Spearman’s determination to have an impact on developing health systems.
“Once he gets his mind set to something, he just really focuses on it, and really wants to make that dream come true,” Swimmer said. “It was interesting traveling with him, because he’s very into different cultures, and I learned a lot through watching him interact with very high level people.
“He just has a way of conducting business that you don’t see the cultural differences.”
Following his time at the University of Maryland Medical Center, Spearman served as President and COO of Laurel Regional Hospital in Maryland from 2012-2016.
Spearman worked to bring the most to the table in any given role throughout his career.
“Most of the jobs that I had, I created,” Spearman said. “So when I became vice president for shock trauma, there was no such thing. They hired me as a director. One day my boss asked me, ‘John, can you do more?’ I said, ‘yeah, I can do a lot more.’”
Spearman moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 2016 to retire, only to be invited out of his retirement to help found the first academic department of surgery in Phoenix, Arizona.
Friend and former colleague, Mira Milas, emphasized Spearman’s legacy on shock trauma and trauma surgery. Milas serves as Chief of the Division of Endocrine Surgery and the Academic Vice Chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of Arizona.
“He committed a lot of his expertise to the field of trauma surgery,” Milas said. “He also, here in Arizona, solidified the trauma program at our campus, which is Banner University Medical Center. Phoenix is the premier level one trauma center in all of Arizona. He provided faculty mentorship so that physicians can have career advancement.”
“He changed the landscape of Arizona medicine,” Milas added.
In addition to his commitment to bettering the communities around him, Spearman has mentored numerous colleagues and employees in his field as well.
“What I admire about him is that he takes interest in his employees,” Swimmer said, “so he’ll see somebody that he sees potential in and he will guide that person to be the best they can be. He is very passionate and compassionate about what he does.”
Even since his youth in Lawrence, John Spearman Jr. could be seen making a positive impact on those around him.
“He’s always been a leader and somebody that people gravitate towards,” Michael Spearman said.
Milas echoed this sentiment, emphasizing the role Spearman’s character plays in his life.
“He is just poised and has a light about him,” Milas said, “that distinguishes himself and his way of life and how he conducts himself in every single situation.”
First Black school board member made an impact on Lawrence
Henderson advocated for equality through leadership in education, journalism, and politics.
By Zana Kennedy
There is no photographic evidence that the Rev. Thomas W. Henderson stepped foot in Lawrence.
However, historical archives paint a picture of the imprint he left on the community: a pastor, an editor and the first person of color on the Lawrence School Board.
As the Civil War continued to burn, Henderson rose from the ashes with thousands of Black men to advocate for the rights of them and their children.
John Spearman Sr. was previously thought to be the first Black member of the Lawrence School Board in 1969. However, Henderson precedes his appointment by almost a century. This position was a professional springboard for Henderson, launching him from the position of reverend at Saint Luke AME Church to a career as an active politician and editor of The Colored Radical and The Colored Citizen.
Born in October 1845 in Greensboro, N.C., Henderson likely lived out the majority of his childhood enslaved. While education continues today to be a bridge to equality, the roadblocks in that era were especially big. Still, Henderson was able to attend Oberlin College in Ohio, a university that was desegregated in 1835. Despite his accomplishments, his story isn’t well known today.
“The less we know, the less powerful we are,” USD 497 school board member Yolanda Franklin said. “I can see why it was difficult to find information because nobody wants to know [African Americans] were even represented back then. Even though he was here for a short period of time, he still broke a barrier.”
Henderson moved to Lawrence in 1868 where he became pastor at the newly-founded AME church. His influence in the community quickly earned him recognition, and he went on to make state history when he was nominated to the Lawrence School Board in 1870 and 1871, the first elected position ever to be filled by a person of color.
“He said he was proud to be in the position he held this evening,” the Lawrence Daily Journal reported after his first nomination, going on to reference a famous abolitionist. “He thought that the soul of John Brown would now stop marching on and his bones lie in peace in his grave.”
This nomination started a ripple effect that would inspire generations, including Franklin’s.
“ To know that our representation went all the way back to then is breathtaking,” Franklin said. “To know that even back then there was somebody still trying to break that barrier. If I could, I would shake his hand and give him a hug.”
Living in the heart of abolitionist country in what was known as Bleeding Kansas, Henderson was surrounded by racism in his position on the school board in those first year after the end of the Civil War. Lawrence maintained segregated elementary schools: Lincoln as the “Black school” and Woodlawn as the “white school.” Although Henderson disagreed with the board’s stance, his position only gave him so much power.
“I can just imagine what it was like to be a man of color and also to be a reverend,” Franklin said. “To be a man of color and out here trying to represent and speak for the African American children, I think some of the challenges he faced then is some of the challenges we still face now. I mean, we’re in 2025, and we still face the challenges where our kids are still undereducated in school.”
Henderson continued his fight for equality in Lawrence schools even after his term on the school board — and time in Lawrence — was up. He co-founded with Allen Williams the area’s first-ever African American newspaper, The Colored Radical. This paper served primarily as a political pamphlet, running from July until November, with the purpose of advocating for Republican candidates who promised to help the African American community. It also served as an alternative to the news outlets that often aspersed Black people, even into the 20th century.
“As I was growing up, you didn’t really hear about people of color, unless they committed a crime,” current school board member Bob Byers said. “Newspapers usually didn’t publicize anything to do with people of color usually, unless they did something negative.”
Even after the column had ended, Henderson was determined to make change through political advocacy, leading him to run for other elected positions. In 1878, he was nominated by his co-editor of The Colored Citizen — which published from 1878-1880 — for lieutenant governor. He withdrew after falling behind 25 votes in the second round, but this was not the end of his political career. Henderson served as House Chaplain of The Kansas House of Representatives in 1879.
When lawmakers in 1878 took up a bill that would eventually allow resegregation of public schools in larger cities, his newspaper, the Colored Citizen, published an editorial in opposition.
“All the children in the city are at liberty to attend the school nearest them, except the poor child that God, for some reason, chose to create with a black face instead of a white one,” the editorial stated. “Our board of education, contrary to the law of the State, the law of God, and the laws of humanity, persist in keeping up race distinctions by keeping up race schools.”
Henderson used the Colored Citizen for more than just writing. He volunteered at the headquarters for the Kansas State Colored Emigration Bureau, an organization that helped Exodusters — African American immigrants who migrated along the Mississippi River—- to escape the Black-coded south.
In 1879, Henderson later transferred to the AME church in Saint Louis and moved several more times to congregations across the country, including in Chicago, New York and Boston. His last congregation was held in Newport, Rhode Island. After 50 years of preaching, he was forced into retirement as his health steadily declined. He died soon after he retired and was buried in Philadelphia.
His passing was felt by his family and the Newport community.
“Many of the best known white and colored citizens called to pay their respects,” Henderson’s obituary states. Dr Henderson has been eminently successful in most all his churches,” Henderson’s obituary in the Philadelphia Tribune stated. “But it is possible that his greatest success was attained at his last church.”
Byers and Franklin are now two of three people of color serving on the school board, and Byers said stories like Hendersons can help inspire younger generations.
“It may not be easy, and it’s never for a person of color,” Byers said. “That’s what makes it important. It really tells younger people [what’s] possible. All you’ve got to do is put forth the effort.”