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Skate event pair’s effort to give back

Apryl Pilolli/Staff photographer

ENLARGE PHOTO

Apryl Pilolli/Staff photographer

ENLARGE PHOTO

Rodney Hunter (left) and Cedric Burns-Davis sit Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2009, at Skateway in Middletown. Staff photo by Apryl Pilolli

Apryl Pilolli/Staff photographer Rodney Hunter (left) and Cedric Burns-Davis sit Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2009, at Skateway in Middletown. Staff photo by Apryl Pilolli

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By Rick McCrabb, Staff Writer 10:39 PM Sunday, December 20, 2009

MIDDLETOWN — There is the Cedric Burns-Davis before and the Cedric-Burns-Davis after.

He graduated from Garfield Alternative School in Middletown in 2003 with a 4.0 grade point average and an immeasurable potential.

“I was a good kid,” he said.

He attended Kentucky State University for 2 1/2 years, but during his return visits home, his life took an “interesting turn,” he said.

He chose money over education, quick dollars over a career.

“I took the wrong path,” he said. “I saw too much at a young age.”

He witnessed how his friends — many much older — became wealthy selling drugs. He wanted what they had. He wanted the jewelry, the cars, he said.

He paused, then added: “But I didn’t want the trouble that came with it.”

What he got was a lengthy police record. His arrests have landed him in the Middletown, and Butler and Warren county jails, and he spent three months in the state’s Correctional Reception Center penitentiary in Orient.

Now 24, Burns-Davis wants to make an honest living, what he called “positive money.”

He and Rodney Hunter, 21, a 2007 Middletown High School graduate, formed Picasso & Red Da Dawn, a promotional business.

They have scheduled a Gospel Skate Night for Christmas Eve, and once the business gets established, they hope to donate some of their profits to local charities and organizations.

“We want to give back,” Hunter said.

The two men share similar relationships with their biological fathers — Burns-Davis met his father when he was 11; Hunter met his father when he was 12.

Hunter, a single father with a 4-month-old daughter, Aiyannah, said he wants to be the “best father I can be.”

Burns-Davis has three children — Amaria, 3, Alaysha, 18 months and Ashlyn, 11 months — with two women, one of them his fiancée.

“It’s time,” he said, “for me to grow up.”

Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2842 or rmccrabb@coxohio.com.