Audio File
Transcript
My name is Ernez Campbell. I am 12 years old.
My name is Malzay Grant. I’m 13 years old
My name is Clay Everett. I’m 14 years old.
We interviewed Kevin McNair on July 18th, 2018.
My birthday is April the 22nd, 1987. My childhood… It was great to me because, although we didn’t have a lot at the time growing up, I never saw that we needed anything. So as a kid, I really was able to be a kid and enjoy just living and just being free. But then, the older- as we got into middle school and going towards high school, I saw just the different changes in our neighborhood. In my community, I say this a lot, I-I never had a positive male role model that lived around me. So, growing up, we didn’t have any guys who were older than us telling us to stay out of trouble, do these things, go apply for a job down here and really, with myself and my friends, who a lot of us didn’t have father figures, really trying to figure it out. But if you don’t know, you’re just doing what you’re comfortable doing, so we’re all following you. We’re really- we were all doing the wrong things because we didn’t really have the right person that reflected the behavior that we should truly be following. So unfortunately, even in high school, I started hustling when I was around 14-15 years old, and although I knew education, and it was easy to me to go to school and pass tests, I may have had 3.0-3.1, but I was still in the streets as far as leaving school, going home and hustling and doing different things. But I didn’t know what it was like to struggle growing up. But once I got to a certain age, I realized that we didn’t have everything else that everybody else had, and that made me want to be able to get things for myself.
Even when I graduated, and went…And my mom wanted me to go to college. I didn’t really want to go there, but she knew that I was smart enough to really go there and be successful. And while I was there, I actually got kicked out of school for hustling in college. Everybody had really counted me out, so I went to a different school, stayed there for a while, finished my class, and then went back to school I went- was going to, that I got kicked out of. While I was there, I was still hustling because I was thinking that I was doing something that could provide a lifestyle for me and my family, which it wasn’t, and when I got kicked out the second time, my uncle is Reverend Grayson. He knew somebody that went to Slippery Rock that was able to get me in, and that really shifted my lifestyle. So I went to Slippery Rock and while I was Slippery Rock, my first year, my cousin Jeron Grayson was actually killed at a house party at Cal U. And when that happened, just… all the anger that I ever had growing up came out of me, and I had honestly wanted to bring hurt and harm to the guy’s family who hurt my cousin, that hurt and harm to my family. But then I knew I didn’t want to continue just to be a part of the problem, and my teacher was saying how “well, I know you was involved in gangs back at home. And sure, I know you was able to lead people to the wrong thing, but what would it be like to lead people do the right things.” So after my cousin was killed, and me and my teacher had this kind of conversation, I created… well, in my head in that class, I created my own nonprofit then. It was called Helping Hands, where I went into the community to actually help kids just understand the importance of making positive decisions. So I didn’t want to be a part of the system, but really created my own program to partner with Pittsburgh Public School. That way I can get the results that I know we both wanted to get, and that’s why I’m glad that I was blessed to be able to get in trouble with the law to stop hustling, because I thought that me hustling was a road map to success, when really it was only a road to ruins.
So I run an in school based mentoring program. We actually take guys from the community and, like, football coaches, basketball coaches, and put them inside the school. So when you go to school, it’s not just Miss Brown who I don’t know who lives in Sewickley or Mount Lebanon, that’s Coach Carter, who I see every Sunday. So it’s a different respect level. I trained teachers on how to become more closely competent. I coach summer league. We have an after school program. You know, everything I’ve done has prepared me for where I am today. When I had got in trouble at school and got kicked out. When I came back to the school, my principal had gave me a mentee. I’m in the 11th, 12th grade, she gave me somebody in the 9th grade and was like, “man, so many people look up to you but show him the right thing to do.” And at the time, I’m like, “well, I’m making all the wrong choices. Like, why would you give somebody to be my mentee?” So now I look back at things like that. I can tell that people really positioned me for what I’m doing today, and then from there, when I went to college, I also had a couple of different mentees and now just, every day, everybody sees one of my mentees. Anything I can do for anybody who’s doing anything positive? I’m here to help. Anybody that’s lost who may not be doing something positive? I don’t write them off. I’m in the kids’ heads, almost. And I’ve had kids call me at 2 or 3 in the morning outside other kids houses, like, “yo, I’m about to shoot this house up,” and the fact that they called me before they did anything showed me two things. First, that they did this. They thought about it and they called me. What? You think I’m gonna say? “Oh, yeah kid, go ahead.” No, that ain’t what we do because it don’t make sense. So, story like that is my biggest success story because that just showed me that I’m inside somebody’s head when I’m not even there. And that’s real power for someone to hear your voice and you not even be around.