Ty’Quarius Moultrie never made it to his second birthday.

The 22-month-old boy was killed by gunfire at Pensacola Village apartments in July 2011. Dwayne Pinestraw was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the shooting.

On Saturday, from Ty’Quarius’ untimely death may come an honor that speaks to power of the positive.

The Ty’Quarius Miles Moultrie Little Free Library will have a grand opening at 10 a.m. at Adoration for a New Beginning Church, 920 W.Government St. The Rev. Marcel Davis says Ty’Quarius’ grandmother attends the church.

Davis says he was was fresh from a reunion of the neighborhood he grew up in in Warrington, The Hill, and thought about the pride people still felt about where they grew up.

He wanted the folks in the Tanyard neighborhood around his church to feel that same sense. And he thought about Ty’Quarius’ grandmother, who had started coming to his church, and who on the day Pinestraw was sentenced told the court she forgave him.

“I said, ‘Let’s educate instead of retaliate,’” Davis says. “Because a lot of crimes in Pensacola are from what I understand based on retaliation. Let’s focus on education.”

Pensacola Police Capt. David Alexander said a rally is planned at Corrine Jones Park after the grand opening to focus on “an effort to reduce violence in the community through education.”

“It is going to show that there are people in the community who are concerned and actively involved” in trying to curb violence like led to Moultrie’s death.

The Little Free Library program began in Wisconsin in 2010 and has grown to include most states and dozens of countries.

The concept is simple:

− Each Little Free Library has a steward, responsible for keeping it stocked with books.

− You stop by and take whatever catches your fancy.

− You return and bring books to contribute.

− Little Free Library books are always a gift – never for sale.

Community can order “kits” for the libraries online or build their own. Ty’Quarius’ library will be made of a recycled Pensacola News Journal newspaper stand.

Davis says there a bus stop right across the street from the church, and “I hope the kids help maintain it and look after it.”

Filmmaker, author and WSRE talk show host Robin Reshard is one of the speakers at Saturday’s event. Escambia County School Superintendent Malcolm Thomas and Escambia County Commission Chairman Lumon May also are to scheduled to attend.

Reshard said she will speak of two people who had libraries as their focus, one national and one local. The first name, she says, is Andrew Carnegie, the industrialist turned philanthropist whose Carnegie Corporation gave grants to found public libraries throughout the English-speaking world at the turn of the 20th century.

Carnegie grants funded the construction of 13 libraries in Florida between 1901 and 1917. Only two communities rejected the grants -- DeFuniak Springs and Pensacola. Reshard said the stipulation that the libraries be integrated was the reason Pensacola rejected the grant.

“He believed libraries were places of learning and learning had no color,” she says.

The local names she will bring up are Alice Williams, a teacher at Booker T. Washington High School, and her husband, Dr. H.G. Williams, who both held deep faith in the power of education.

“We should no longer miss opportunities because we’re making assumptions about people and learning,” Reshard says. “(Libraries) open up worlds of opportunity” and they should be where people are.

“So out of the fire, so to speak, (of Ty’Quarius’ death) you have this phoenix rising.”

The grand opening of the Ty’Quarius Mile Moultrie Little Free Library is at 10 a.m. April 12 at 920 W. Government St.

To learn more about the Little Free Library, visit www.littlefreelibrary.org 

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