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- Mar 16, 2024
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March 15, 2024
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Orlando woman finds new meaning following son's death by gifting music
By Julie Gargotta Orlando
UPDATED 6:37 AM ET Mar. 15, 2024 PUBLISHED 5:00 AM ET Mar. 15, 2024
ORLANDO, Fla. — In a symphony of sadness, an Orlando woman found a new melody that is having a profound effect upon eager, young musicians.
What You Need To Know
Sherri Tyson lost her son, Zane, to cancer when he was 22 years oldTyson created a nonprofit in his honor called LEGAStrings to gift deserving students lessons or instrumentsOne of the nonprofit's first awards went to 13-year-old Abigail Fazekas, who plays the bass in a middle school orchestraFazekas, too, lost a family member to cancer and feels a sense of connection with the nonprofit's founder
Sherri Tyson launched a nonprofit called LEGAStrings, gifting lessons — and even instruments — to deserving Central Florida students.Her inspiration for the philanthropic venture was her son Zane, who passed away from pediatric brain cancer at 22 years old.
Zane, she said, was an avid skateboarder, spending much of his time at Orlando Skate Park, but his “more refined side” was playing the violin.
“I know a lot of students can’t afford them, instruments. I want to provide instruments to children who wanted to play,” she said. “It just carries on his love for music. Outside of skateboarding, it was music for him.”
A life short, but well-lived
Many mornings, Tyson unlatches the gate by her College Park apartment complex’s pool and walks, coffee in hand, toward Lake Fairview. The wooden dock stretches onto the lake from the concrete patio; tall reeds of grass spring from the water, framing the slips, as ducks slowly glide by.
In the tranquil setting, the mother sips, reads and thinks.
“I connect with him a lot out here,” Tyson said. “The No. 1 person I think about more than anyone else is my son Zane.”
Right now, Tyson’s reading a wistful book about signs and how, if one looks closely, connection is possible, even after a loved one has passed.
“Every morning, I want Zane to let me know he’s OK today. If I’m paying attention, he’ll let me know. I’ve already seen it, the three little birds,” she said.
Meanwhile, inside and all around Tyson’s apartment, mementos from a life with Zane sit frozen in time: framed photographs, a skateboard covered with signatures, a red electric guitar. By the window, draped on a leopard-patterned chair, is a blanket with mother and son, smiling and clad with matching black beanies.
On another wall, nestled between prints of skylines and snowy mountains, a violin is pinned alongside its bow.
Zane, she explained, had an affinity for travel and boasted many friends, hobbies and interests.
While it may look like a shrine, Tyson insists the objects haven’t moved in many years: “This is where they belong,” she said, eyeing a white, chalky-looking object in the shape of two hands clasped together.
“This right here is Zane and my hands in a plaster cast, taken the morning he passed,” Tyson said, touching the object gently. “I never had a chance to do it, and the morning he passed, I looked at my sister and said, ‘We never did this’.”
Tyson said that by the time her son got to Maitland Middle School, he got serious about music, under the direction of orchestra director Lisa Loucks. His love for the violin blossomed.
But, when her son turned 20, Tyson said the family’s world was turned upside down with a devastating diagnosis: Zane had a medulloblastoma, a cancerous brain tumor.
As he fought the cancer, the hashtag “Make Zane Better” began popping up around area skate parks, the community rallying behind the young man.
The time, Tyson explained, suddenly moved fast, yet was also the longest of her life.
Zane was treated at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, where doctors treat children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. His last treatment was on a St. Patrick’s Day. Then came a series of cardiac arrests, in which, at one point, Tyson performed CPR for 12 minutes, but her son was left with irreversible brain damage. He slowly slipped away.
Tyson said she could not imagine the time she had left with Zane watered down to visits in a long-term care facility in Memphis, Tenn. So, she reached out to the place which had given the family much hope.
“I had St. Jude step in and put us on one of those Angel Flights, flew us home. And I had already prearranged for hospice to have everything at the house,” she said, gesturing toward the spot where the leopard-print chair now sits.
“This is where I brought him, and this is where he spent the next 13 months in hospice, here. Getting to be right by the lake.”
After her son passed on July 28, 2021, Tyson took Zane’s ashes to Ireland and released them at the Cliffs of Moher, tattooing her forearm with a Celtic knot, shamrock and her son’s name.
“The difference between someone being here and not being here is such a thin line,” she said in her living room, surrounded by the relics of her past life with her son. “With all this here, we get to have him around us every day.”
The gift of music
As Tyson picked up the pieces of her life, she got a job as a server at a nearby Irish pub in College Park. It was a good distraction, as she dived deeper into raising money for the foundation in her son’s honor.
One of the foundation’s first scholarship recipients, Abigail Fazekas, said that when she applied, she thought it was a long shot.
But Fazekas’ story of immense sadness and finding beauty through music touched Tyson, and she coordinated private lessons for the 13-year-old orchestra member at SunRidge Middle School in Winter Garden.
Inspired by her violin-playing sister and her equally musical father, who played in a band, Fazekas in sixth grade selected an admittedly less popular orchestral instrument — the bass.
As Fazekas’ family went through turmoil, the teenager said she leaned upon her orchestra family, led by the same director, Lisa Loucks, who was once Zane’s director in middle school.
“My dad sadly passed away this summer from cancer. He had it for two years.” Fazekas said. “It was hard, but we got through it. He always loved hearing me play and watch(ing) me do things. Getting these lessons, they really helped me. I have gotten into All-County, All-State this year, and I feel like it was because of the lessons. … I know he’s proud of me right now.”
For Tyson, watching Fazekas play with her orchestra group one chilly February afternoon, days before her own son would have turned 25, was a full-circle moment. It brought her to tears.
“I’m just really proud of her, and I have a feeling I’m going to know her for a long time,” Tyson said. “She’s come into my life for one reason or another. Zane’s at the core of that.”
Tyson has donated 16 instruments to other schools since then, getting music into the hands of deserving students.
The mother will host a fundraiser and silent auction for LEGAStrings from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Monday, April 1, at The Castle Irish Pub and Restaurant, located along Edgewater Drive in College Park.
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