Trayvon Martin’s father, mother fight for his image

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Tracy Martin has been preparing for his second Father’s Day without the son family members and Trayvon Martin’s former football coach have described as so close to his father, they were “like two peas in a pod.”

The elder Martin was a fixture at football practice at Forzano park in Miramar, the town next door to where Fulton lived, and where Trayvon was a standout player for the Wolverines. Wolverines coach Jerome Horton told USA Today in December that the elder Martin would make his son sit out games when he broke a rule or messed up in school. And Martin often brags of how a 9-year-old Trayvon saved him from a fire in his apartment by calling 911.

Martin had taken his son to Sanford as part punishment, part cooling off period, after the teen was suspended from school following the discovery of a baggy in his backpack that contained marijuana residue. Tracy Martin’s girlfriend, with whom he and Trayvon were staying in Sanford, has a son, then 14 years old, and some of the phone texts released by the defense were from Tracy Martin, telling his son to be a big brother to the younger boy. The boy told television interviewers last year that Trayvon asked if he wanted anything from the store during a break in the NBA All Star Game, and that the Skittles were for him.

Tracy Martin and his girlfriend had gone out to dinner, and left the boys at her townhouse. Martin’s sister-in-law has said that when Martin called family members to break the news that Trayvon was dead, he simply broke down sobbing, “my baby gone, my baby gone…”

Now, Martin and Fulton are learning how to grieve in the glare of the public spotlight. And they’re trying to find some meaning in it.

“For dads that are in my place I would tell them, hold on to God, be encouraged, there is a light at the end of the dark tunnel,” says Martin. “This is a long journey, and a long process, and along the way you find out a lot of things, mostly about yourself.”

“As strong as we are as human beings, there’s always a breaking point in all of us,” he says. “But this tragedy has seemed to bring me closer to myself, and to realizing that there’s a bigger purpose out there, and what I stand for. And right now that bigger purpose is to serve and get justice for Trayvon.”

‘We decided to have a legacy for Trayvon’

Martin and Fulton divorced in 1999, but in the wake of their son’s death, they have become a constant presence together. They appear, side-by-side, in court, in churches, and in front of banks of television cameras each time they walk out of the Sanford courthouse to react to the day’s events. They’ve started a foundation in their son’s name, and Sybrina has spent much of her time, when not in court hearings, and with Martin when he’s not on the road — traveling the country to advocate against “Stand Your Ground” gun laws like the Florida statute cited by Sanford police in their initial decision not to arrest Zimmerman. A task force appointed by Florida’s governor last year concluded without recommending any changes to Florida’s self-defense gun law.

Fulton and Martin are undeterred.

“We decided to have a legacy for Trayvon, to try to help other families,” Fulton said of the foundation, saying its overall purpose is to help “victims of senseless gun violence.”