Tyre Nichols’ friends say his spirit will change the conversation about policing
Friends and family remember Tyre Nichols as a kind, gentle man. Community members leave stuffed animals and balloons after a prayer gathering in memory of Nichols at Castlegate Lane and Bear Creek Cove. (Mark Weber/The Daily Memphian)
Tyre Nichols belonged to an informal group at the Starbucks at Saddle Creek in Germantown, people who met several times a week to share the substance of their lives, whatever it happened to be.
Nichols, 29, was at least 13 years younger than the next youngest member. And for Nate Spates, that says so much about how comfortable, how nonjudgmental Nichols was. And how easily he found community with others.
Spates is one of those remembering Nichols, from here to California, as his funeral approaches Wednesday, Feb. 1, some three weeks after he died Jan. 10 following a savage beating by police days earlier.
Tyre Nichols
Funeral services for Nichols will be at 1 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 1, at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church. A memorial service will follow Feb. 4 in Sacramento, California. Thousands are expected to attend the Memphis funeral service, including Vice President Kamala Harris.
“We were all comfortable,” Spates said of the Saddle Creek group. “And we came from all different walks of life. I’ve been married for decades. My wife and I are in an interracial relationship. We have different preferences when it came to relationships. I mean, the group was a cornucopia of people. It’s great for society to just sit and talk.”
Spates, who likely knew Nichols the least, expects he could relate to him the most.
“Just the free spiritedness, the love of art, photography, nature and just being, and not necessarily needing anything external to be happy,” said Spates, who now has a career in regional sales, a family and a home in a “beautiful” neighborhood here. “It was like looking in the mirror and seeing myself 13 years younger.”
All of that, he is sure, is what Nichols would have had too, what he was growing into as he walked alone with his thoughts around Downtown Memphis and in Shelby Farms, photographing sunsets and other wordless beauty. A sample of his photography can be seen here.
“Everyone, be nice to each other. Don’t pick on other people; be kind.”
Tyre Nichols
“I think that’s the most heartbreaking part about it,” Spates said.
People who knew Nichols talk about his gentleness, the way they felt when he was around and the quiet way he naturally leaned in to be present with them.
Patrick Tolefree was new on the Sunrise Mall security force in Citrus Heights, California, and struggling with a maze of personal issues when he met Nichols about seven years ago.
“I was going through a lot at Sunrise Mall,” Tolefree said. “Ty had just started, and he was, you know, getting in my space, trying to make me laugh and staying close.”
That struck Tolefree as odd behavior. He walked away every time, without a word.
“A couple of weeks later, I needed a ride home,” Tolefree continued. “He barely knew me, and he gave me a ride home. And every night for maybe months, he gave me a ride home because I didn’t have a way.”
Dozens of mourners showed up to Tobey Skate Park in midtown on Jan. 26 to honor Nichols. (Patrick Lantrip/The Daily Memphian)
The two talked and sang in the car.
“He was a different type of person than I had met,” Tolefree said. “Being an African American man, he didn’t act like the guys I hung out with. He was his own person. He listened to different types of music — all types — you name it, Ty listened to it. He never judged anybody. He never cared about your color, your sex. It didn’t matter. Ty was a genuine guy.”
DeAndre Nichols
Nichols, whose name was DeAndre Nichols, was the youngest of his parents’ four children. His biological father, Steve Nichols, is no longer living. Nichols grew up in California, graduating from Rio Linda High School in Sacramento.
His mother, RowVaughn Wells, moved to Memphis with her husband, Rodney Wells, five years ago. They live in a quiet neighborhood of two-story homes in the Brandywine subdivision off Raines and Ross Roads, the Hickory Hill intersection where her son’s initial traffic stop happened.
“I know in my heart that Ty wants us to be peaceful, but in my heart, I also just am so angry that I don’t know how to express it.”
Kymberlee Barlow
Sacramento friend of Tyre
Nichols came here to visit his mother early in the pandemic and then, maybe due to the disruption to travel and the economy, found it easier to stay in Memphis, friends said.
“It was like a fresh start, you know,” said Kymberlee Barlow. “He took it.”
Barlow is a friend from the group of young adults who worked at the mall outside Sacramento, starting in 2016.
Nichols, who was then in his early 20s, worked for Verizon Wireless in a kiosk across from Cinnabon, where Barlow worked. She remembers him encouraging her not to give in to anger and frustration as default emotions.
Protesters express their grief for RowVaughn Wells, Nichols’ mother, at a protest organized by Devante Hill (speaking), a community organizer, at Handy Park. (Neil Strebig/The Daily Memphian)
“Even if there were children teasing each other, he’d say ‘Everyone, be nice to each other. Don’t pick on other people; be kind,’” Barlow said. “There would often be kids out front skating in the little parking lot. He would always go over and skate with them because that’s what he loved to do.”
Barlow was friends with Nichols when his son, now 4, was born in California.
The child and mother live in Sacramento.
Tolefree’s favorite memory, and the one he volunteers now to a reporter halfway across the country, is about the time he was giving Nichols a ride home from work. The car broke down. Nichols offered to get on his skateboard and go for help, but Tolefree wouldn’t hear of it.
“Help was 15 minutes away by car; that was too far to skate in the dark,” Tolefree said.
Neither had money because payday was the next day. So, they stayed in the car all night, waiting for the first of their two paychecks to automatically register.
“We joked around, and we made the best of the situation. Since there was a gas station across the street, we went to grab a couple of snacks and we just hung out and just chopped it up about life,” Tolefree said, his voice catching.
“I’m so sorry,” Tolefree said, struggling to recover his composure. “Ty was so important to me.”
‘So angry, I don’t know how to express it’
Late Monday afternoon, Barlow was helping friends and family in Sacramento put on a vigil in a skatepark there for Nichols, a man who even as young a man, she says, was distinctly different.
“His brother asked me to speak at the vigil, but honestly, I said, ‘I’m not a speaker. I don’t use my words correctly,’” Barlow said. “I also have composed myself this whole time. So, I know that as soon as everyone else is losing their minds, I’m going to be crying as well. Sacramento is where Ty grew up. It’s where he went to school. So much of his life is here.”
Barlow wishes she could help Memphis understand what it lost in her fine friend, and what she feels Memphis took from her.
“I’m definitely having a hard time, and I know in my heart that Ty wants us to be peaceful, but in my heart, I also just am so angry that I don’t know how to express it,” Barlow said.
Spates is taking heart, saying that because people universally seem to see Nichols’ death as a terrible aberration, that change has a chance of actually happening now and sticking.
“The one thing that I want is productive dialogue,” Spates said. “Not just, oh, you know, the political talk, and we’re looking into it and, you know, but actual dialogue, amongst parties, both in the political as well as the private sector. If there was one thing I can wish, it would be that. I think the biggest hangup in society now is the lack of dialogue. We have more ways to communicate, and we communicate worse than we ever have as a society.”
Cold, gray grief
Monday night in Memphis, while the whole region waited for freezing rain, Rodney Wells stood at the corner where his stepson was savagely beaten, watching neighbors walk up in coats and gloves for a prayer vigil at the corner of Castlegate Lane and Bear Creek Cove, the marker people around the world saw in the footage the city released last Friday.
“I really appreciate all the help, support and outreach and showing the love for my son,” Wells said, his voice steady in the cold. “To know that my son died right here is hard. To know that my son called my wife’s name, and we was not able to hear him, to help him, is devastating. We want justice for Tyre.”
The parents of Tyre Nichols, RowVaughn and Rodney Wells, attend a candlelight vigil for their son who was killed after an altercation with Memphis Police officers. (Patrick Lantrip/The Daily Memphian)
Wells will have to pass that corner every time he leaves the Brandywine subdivision. Still, the support in the neighborhood, he said, was beyond what the family could have imagined.
“We are so loved in this neighborhood; we’re so loved in the community,” Wells said. “We are so loved in Memphis. But this is very difficult.”
Charita McCoy, a pastor who lives in the cove, came home the night of Jan. 7, to find it blocked off with police vehicles.
“I could not get in,” McCoy said. “All this week, it’s like I heard the cries, the cries of the world. People drive in the cove and turn around and their lights shine in my windows. It’s just been an ongoing hurt and just pain that I feel.”
Instead of trying to talk to people individually, McCoy got permission from the homeowner association to host the vigil, amplifying hope, starting with prayers for the Nichols and Wells families. Her message Monday was partly that when corrupt police officers beat a Black man, everyone is beaten.
“… When corrupt policemen kill a Black man in Memphis, a part of us — all of us — dies,” McCoy shouted. “Dreams die. Visions die. Hope dies. But you know what? I thank God for our good and true men in blue. We applaud all of you.”
“To know that my son called my wife’s name, and we was not able to hear him, to help him, is devastating. We want justice for Tyre.”
Rodney Wells
Tyre’s stepfather
The GoFundMe account that RowVaughn Wells started to cover mental health costs for the family, time from work in their fight for justice and a memorial skate park has raised more than $1.3 million in three days. Gifts between $10 and $10,000 have come from 33,400 donors.
Barlow remembers Nichols as a spiritual person who went to church and loved others.
“I think that his mom did an absolutely fantastic job raising him. I think that he was just such a kind and gentle soul that there was no way for him to be anything but peaceful and calm,” Barlow said, confirming that his mother’s name was tattooed on Nichols’ left bicep.
This one feels different
Spates and the rest of the coffee group are going through the gut check now that happens when death is sudden.
Spates, who is also a Black man and about the same height, was in the Starbucks last weekend. Another member of the group turned, saw him and called out a greeting to Nichols before his brain could intervene.
“We have similar statues … and the same complexion,” Spates said. “The difference is that I outweighed Ty by about 70 pounds, which is something I put into perspective for people when they’re trying to gauge his size and how small he was. And I tell them, ‘I’m 250 pounds; Ty was 144 pounds. Take 70 pounds off me and ask yourself, how hard would it be to handle somebody like that?’”
Local activists display photos of Tyre Nichols at a press conference with his family after they watched video of their son’s encounter with Memphis Police during the traffic stop that led to his death. (Mark Weber/The Daily Memphian)
Spates has long had a theory that it would take the death of a completely innocent man — and someone with no record, not even a parking ticket — to change the conversation about how police do their work.
“You know the term the sacrificial lamb?” Spates asked. “And as sad and as horrific as it was, and I remember the day I learned about it, I felt, ‘He’s not dying in vain.’ And we immediately started reaching out to everybody, moving to draw attention. Now, granted, it’s gotten way bigger than we could have ever imagined. In some aspects, I’m happy about that and other aspects, I don’t want it to lose its purpose for this community.”
Topics
Tyre Nichols police brutalityJane Roberts
Jane Roberts has reported in Memphis for more than 20 years. As a senior member of The Daily Memphian staff, she was assigned to the medical beat during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also has done in-depth work on other medical issues facing our community, including shortages of specialists in local hospitals. She covered K-12 education here for years and later the region’s transportation sector, including Memphis International Airport and FedEx Corp.
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