At Super Bowl LVII, Wilmington University alumna Fabersha Flynt was on the 50-yard line as one of four Pat Tillman Scholars honorary team captains participating in the coin toss.

The Tillman Scholarship honors Cpl. Patrick Daniel Tillman Jr., a record-setting safety for the Arizona Cardinals who turned down a three-year, multi-million-dollar deal with the Cardinals to enlist in the U.S. Army after 9/11. He was killed in action by friendly fire in Afghanistan in 2004. Tillman’s family created the Pat Tillman Foundation, which, according to its website, “identifies remarkable military service members, veterans and spouses, empowering them with academic scholarships, lifelong leadership development opportunities and a diverse, global community of high-performing mentors and peers.”

Flynt is one of those remarkable individuals. The executive director of Adult Education and Walton County Campus at Georgia’s Athens Technical College, Flynt was married to Staff Sgt. Bryan A. Lewis, who was killed on March 13, 2006, during Operation Iraqi Freedom. After battling bouts of depression and anxiety, she created a scholarship in memory of her husband and founded an educational consulting firm that supports higher education institutions fostering learning environments that stress the importance of diversity and inclusion for marginalized students. 

Flynt earned her M.S. in Human Services at WilmU in 2018 and was awarded the Tillman Scholarship in 2021. She is pursuing a doctorate in Higher Education Administration at the University of Southern Mississippi. As stated on the Pat Tillman Foundation website, she “will use relevant scholarship and strategies to help give voice to the need for educational equality and its significance in providing ‘liberty and justice for all’ within higher education and beyond.”   

— Maria Hess and Laurie Jensen