Davion Only,15, Makes Emotional Plea For a Family to Adopt Him

Davion Navar Henry Only has been waiting for a family all of his life and he recently decided to take matters into his own hands. He has only one desire for his prospective family: “to love me forever.”

Davion, 15, has been in foster care his whole life, but has never had a family. On a recent Sunday, he stood in front of St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church in St. Petersburg, Fla., and made a public plea for a family.

“I’ll take anyone,” Davion said. “Old or young, dad or mom, black, white, purple. I don’t care. And I would be really appreciative. The best I could be.”

The plea has garnered national attention that Davion hopes will help him finally find a family.

“If you can, reach out and get me and love me until I die,” Davion told ABC News.

“I’m praying and still hoping,” he said. “I know God hasn’t given up and I’m not either.”

Back in June, equipped with a copy of his birth certificate, Davion went to a library and searched his birth mother’s name online. He had been born while she was in jail. He found out that she had a criminal background that included drugs and theft. He also found her obituary. She had died just a few weeks earlier.

“When I found out she died, I was kind of angry,” he said. He remembered thinking to himself, “This is ridiculous. How did I not know?”

He cried in the library, but decided his family’s history wouldn’t define him.

“When I found out all that stuff about my family, it made me want to be more successful, no matter what,” Davion said. “I don’t want to go down that same path.”

“I’m not going to use all my bad stuff that happened to me as an excuse, but I’m going to use it as motivation to push me more and give me more courage,” he said.

Read the rest of this story here

Democracy needs journalism it can trust.

This election season, the stakes are higher than usual — and so is the pressure on newsrooms to soften their coverage, stay quiet, or just disappear. Independent reporting, the kind that answers to readers instead of advertisers or political pressure, matters more in a moment like this, not less.

For over 14 years, Atlanta Black Star has stayed independent and reader-funded. We have no corporate owner and no shareholders telling us what to cover or how to cover it. That independence is also our biggest vulnerability: nothing protects it except readers choosing to fund it directly.

Newspaper ad revenue has fallen more than 80% since 2005, and local newsrooms are closing at a rate of roughly two a week nationwide. When outlets go under in a moment like this, it's rarely the independent, reader-funded ones that get to stick around.

We know a request for support isn't why you came here. But without readers choosing to fund this work directly, the depth of reporting we can do at home and abroad shrinks along with everyone else's. If you're not in a position to give, that doesn't change how much we value you as a reader.

If you are able to, a recurring contribution does more for us than a single one-time gift, because it lets us plan the next investigation instead of just the next invoice. It takes about 30 seconds, no long form, no account. Thank you for continuing to support independent journalism and freedom of the press.

Back to top