Rev. Al and I are so excited about this episode. The Mayor and Rev. go back a long ways – both graduates of City College High School and both leaders in this community everyday since then.

An amazing athlete, Kurt Schmoke lead the City Knights to Championships for two years straight while he was in High School: Junior and Senior year.  One of his mentors was George Young, a man who went on to run the New York Giants. He helped Kurt set his sights high and was pivotal in his journey to Yale.

Kurt remembers wanting to be Mayor back in his early days of High School – inspired by then Mayor Tommy D'Alesandro during a speech at his school.

The graduate of Yale undergrad and Harvard Law School landed himself in Oxford for two years as a Rhodes Scholar. In High School he was a member of the famed Boys Club: The Lancers. As a Lancer, he traveled the world and it opened his eyes to cultures all over the world. He didn't get smaller – he got bigger, and before you know it he was Baltimore's States Attorney and eventually its Mayor. He served three terms – focusing on making Baltimore "The City that Reads" and he tore down and rebuilt every multi-story public housing project in Baltimore.

As the President of the University of Baltimore (UB), he lends his experience and his vision for a new Station North. It is underway with UB playing a real role in the re-development and re-positioning of land in the immediate area. Two other big, transformative projects in the area are 1) the transformation of Baltimore's Penn as a new state of the art train station and 2) UB's re-development of the US Post Office site adjacent to the campus.

Kurt shows us what's possible with good parents and good mentors in life. Thanks Mayor Schmoke, for all you have done over the years. Thanks for what you are doing now to make Baltimore a better place.