It would not be an overstatement for me to say that Martius Harding, the controversial Baltimore City teacher convicted of drug distribution, helped teach me the value of hard work.
In 1994, when I was a freshman scholarship student at McDonogh, Martius Harding was the most driven athlete in the wrestling room.
He trained with intensity. He was avocal and motivated leader. He expected nothing but the best out of himself and his teammates.
I remember some of his classic battles with Gilman?s Greg Plitt, Mt. St. Joe?s Danny DeVivo and Bullis? Eugene Brodetsky. I remember his wins, how he marched his way to the finals of the National Prep School tournament in 1995, but also his losses. Even in a rare defeat, Martius carried himself with dignity ? as a decent, smart, respectable role model. He is still the only two-time winner of McDonogh wrestling?s “Eagle Award,” voted on by the other wrestlers for the athlete who shows the most “spirit, dedication and self-sacrifice and effort directed to a total team goal.”
He was kind to the younger guys on the team, never too busy to show me the right way to execute a move or give a critique of a match. Thinking back on high school, there were few people I looked up to more.
So, it was a sad day for me and many in the wrestling community when we heard Martius had been arrested for possession of cocaine with the intent to distribute. It was even sadder on June 16 when a federal judge sentenced him to seven years in prison.
“I have very fond memories of Martius,” Cornell Bass, Media Director for the Maryland State Wrestling Association, told me recently. “He was a model kid. He excelled academically. He excelled athletically. He had a good social character. He maintained that excellence when he left Dunbar and went to McDonogh. I was shocked when I heard what happened.”
Martius, 28, who had wrestled for Virginia and West Virginia in college, and in 2002 became a special education teacher at a Grovans Elementary in Baltimore, could not on a teacher?s salary afford to support his five children and turned to selling drugs, his lawyer, Lawrence Rosenberg, told me.
As a teacher, he was respected at his school, where the principal wrote a letter to the federal judge handling Martius? case in his defense.
One parent, whose 6-year-old son attends Grovans Elementary, told me Martius was well-liked by the students and staff.
“He was still the same good guy you knew,” the parent said. “He had a good rapport with the kids. They really related to him. They?re going to miss him.”
My libertarian friends would argue that Martius didn?t even commit a crime by selling crack ? that all he did was link buyers and sellers in a free exchange in an open market.
But we know better than that. We know the hell crack cocaine brings with it. How a mother cries her worst tears when she learns her son is addicted. And how that son, forced to feed his habit, turns to crime.
Prison is a rough place. At Maryland?s first gang summit this year, experts said those who enter its barred cells many times emerge worse off. They may not be affiliated with a gang when they enter, but they very well could be when they leave.
All I can hope for is that the Martius Harding I knew ? the one regarded highly by his students, principal, former teammates and many in the wrestling community ? emerges from prison a better man.
Luke Broadwater is a staff writer for the Baltimore Examiner. He can be reached a [email protected]
