Keynote Speaker: Tyrone Flowers

Flowers was born to teenage parents who could not raise him. He spent his childhood being shuffled between foster homes, detention centers, reform schools, and state youth facilities. Labeled “beyond parental control” at age seven, he was also diagnosed with behavior problems and learning disorders. Service providers saw no hope for his future.

Determined to prove wrong all of the adults who had no hope for his future, Flowers resumed high school. He gained popularity on the basketball team, had completed graduation requirements, and had received offers to play basketball in college; however, just two weeks before graduation, Flowers was shot three times by a basketball teammate. The shooting left him in a wheelchair and, faced with decisions about his future with limited use of his body, he chose to use his mind. A diploma from Penn Valley Community College in hand, he graduated next from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a minor in psychology with academic honors. In 1998, Flowers went on to receive a Juris Doctorate from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law, where he received the CALI Excellence for the Future Award for his work in ‘Children & the Law.’ Flowers was the first person in his family to obtain a college degree.