Kimball junior Xavier Thomas-Lewis was touring colleges on the East Coast while visiting his brother Nicholas over winter break when he got the news.
“Nicholas was outside of his apartment at the time, and so my mom gave him a message saying that he needed to check on me, like, right now,” Xavier said. “So, it kind of scared him to death.”
“I mean, he was panicked. I didn’t mean to do that,” mother Carrie Tabor said.
The news was that Xavier got a perfect score on his ACT.
“My mom had gotten an email or something that told her that the scores were in, but it didn’t tell her what the scores were,” he said. “So, she told me to check it, and so I did, and I saw that I got a perfect score, and so I told her.”
It was then that Tabor sent her son Nicholas rushing back to his younger brother in a panic. Luckily, the news was much better than Nicholas had thought.
“I really thought it was awesome,” Xavier said. “I didn’t really know what to do.”
Tabor said, “It was actually a pretty cool experience that Xavier found out that he got a perfect score while he was there with his brother.”
Xavier had taken the test earlier in December, and it was only the second time he took it. The first time he took it was in August 2021 just as his junior year of high school was starting, and he had gotten a 35. He was perfectly happy with that score, Tabor said, but the school would be paying for it, so he and his mom thought he might as well shoot for the perfect score.
“I was like, let’s just go ahead and take it again,” Tabor said. “Because our school was actually super supportive, and so Kimball High School said that they would pay for all of the juniors to take an extra ACT, so he decided to go ahead and take it since the school was paying for it. And then 10 days later, he found out that he got a 36.”
Xavier will still have to take the test one more time since it is a state test for Nebraska juniors, but because he took those previous tests, he will know what to expect.
“I knew I would have to take it as a junior anyway, so I wanted to take it once or twice beforehand to see what it was like,” he said.
The perfect ACT score wasn’t the only good news in the Tabor/Thomas-Lewis household this school year. Xavier’s older brother Nicholas, the one he was visiting over winter break, was selected as one of two Rhodes Scholarship recipients for the U.S. district encompassing around seven different states.
“I think all oxygen left my body. I was just so happy,” Nicholas said.
The Rhodes Scholarship is the oldest and one of the most prestigious scholarship programs in the entire world, according to the Rhodes Trust. The scholarship pays all expenses for up to four years of study at the University of Oxford in England.
Nicholas, a 2018 Kimball graduate, is now a senior at University of Pennsylvania double-majoring in cognitive science with a concentration in cognitive neuroscience and health and societies with a concentration in public health, along with a minor in neuroscience.
Nicholas was at home for Thanksgiving break when he was going through the final interview via Zoom. With five other siblings in the house, he stayed on the call from a room in his attic. He said the interviews of the roughly dozen District 13 finalists occurred over the course of two days, and then all the finalists were put in a breakout Zoom room while the panel of judges deliberated.
“I was in this Zoom meeting with all the other Rhodes finalists from District 13 for three hours, just waiting to hear back,” Nicholas said. “…Then they pulled us back to the main room and said, ‘Alright, we’ve selected our two scholars, and we’re going to announce them in alphabetical order.’”
Nicholas said in hindsight he should have known he was selected after the first person was announced; alphabetically, his name was the only one of the finalists’ that could have come after the first Rhodes Scholar.
“The first winner ended up having an ‘S’ last name and I was ‘T,’ so I was basically the only one left at that point,” he said. “I didn’t even think about it in the moment just because my heart was racing so much. It’s funny in retrospect.”
After the announcement was made that Nicholas was the second Rhodes Scholar for District 13, which encompassed the states of Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, North Dakota and South Dakota, the two scholars, the panel of judges and other Rhodes Scholar alumni held a kind of virtual social reception. The moment he got off the Zoom call, he had to share the news.
“… From my attic, I ran downstairs and my mom was standing in the kitchen, and she turned around and I just yelled, ‘I got it,’” he said. “And then immediately we both started crying and ran to each other. But yeah, it was just an amazing feeling.”
According to the Rhodes Trust, about 100 Rhodes Scholars will be selected worldwide this year from 60 different countries. This year, more than 2,300 American students began the application process and 235 applicants made it to the final stage. Nicholas was one of the 32 ultimately selected from the U.S. He said he plans to get his master’s degree in evidence-based social intervention and policy evaluation while at Oxford.
Between the accomplishments of Xavier in high school and the accomplishments of Nicholas in college, Tabor said she is proud to be their mom.
“It’s pretty humbling actually, and I feel very honored that I get to say I’m their mom,” she said. “…Through this process, people are like, ‘Oh my gosh, congratulations. You must have done something right.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, this is not me. I got out of their way and helped them clear roadblocks along their path so that they can do what they do best.’”
Tabor said both Nicholas and Xavier forged their own paths throughout high school and college to get exactly what they wanted out of the experience, and thankfully, Kimball Public Schools administration was supportive with that.
“Nicholas (was) a pioneer in his high school. He kind of just said, ‘this is what I’m doing,’ and administration just kind of helped him make it happen,” Tabor said. “He created a lot of pathways in his high school to help him get to where he wanted to be. And, I look at where our high school is now, and I see the foundation that Nicholas helped laid for them, which, I think, is also why Xavier has been able to be successful as a high school student here. It’s because of the pushing and determination that Nicholas, and actually the rest of his class, had to make sure that Kimball was a good school for those that came behind them.”
Tabor also attributes her sons’ success to their high school principal at Kimball.
“Danielle Reader, the current principal of Kimball High School, played a tremendous role in the success my boys have had,” she said. “Had it not been for her support and willingness to push for more opportunities, they might not be where they are today.”
Reader said both students continue to make the school proud.
“We are very proud of both of the Thomas-Lewis boys,” she said. “Nicholas took full advantage of all Kimball Public Schools had to offer. He is a very motivated and disciplined student and we know he will continue to represent Kimball well at Oxford University in the fall. Xavier is a very talented young man, both in and out of the classroom. We are very excited to see what the future holds for him.”
Xavier said he doesn’t know where he plans to go to school yet, but hopes to go into something like mechanical engineering. He stays involved with just about everything he possibly can be in high school, including choir, show choir, band, jazz band, cross country, track and field, cheer, student council, NHS, speech, One Act and quiz bowl, along with taking four college courses this semester.
“I was a little nervous about him as a junior high student, because he was so reserved and in a shell, and I wasn’t sure that he would be able to forge the path that he wanted academically because he is very, very smart, but not always the greatest advocate for himself,” Tabor said. “So, I was a little nervous that maybe he wouldn’t get the high school career he wanted, but he has proved me wrong.”
As for Nicholas, he was just as involved in high school, and currently, he is enjoying his last year in college participating as a member of the cheer team, member of the speech and debate team, vocalist with the Penny Loafers, campus guide with Kite & Key Society, and co-chair of the Admissions Dean’s Advisory Board, along with working as a mentor and tutor in West Philadelphia elementary schools through the Netter Center for Community Partnerships. He was also named a Dean’s Scholar at U-Penn, of which only nine students are selected, and he’ll graduate with a 3.98 GPA before heading overseas in the fall.
Nicholas said that while he accomplished a lot in his academic career so far, it’s thanks to one of his — and his brother’s — most important supporters.
“I think my mom almost certainly sells herself short when she said, ‘I just got out of the way.’ Like, no, that is not true at all,” Nicholas said. “She is an incredible woman, and, I mean, our circumstances haven’t always been the easiest thing, but I never once in my life had to want for something because she has always fought to give me and my siblings every opportunity that we could ask for, and it’s because of her that we’ve been able to have the success that we do.”
*Originally published in the Star-Herald on Jan. 25, 2022.
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