By John Brice
Special Contributor
Hollywood, be it silver screen or flat-screen, has produced no shortage of dramas centered on life in the gritty streets of Baltimore.
From TV dramas “Homicide: Life on the Street” to HBO’s long-revered “The Wire” series, which has seen lasting popularity and relevance due its subject-matters’ endurance across two decades, the entertainment industry has used the all-too-real problems – corruption, crime, drugs among myriad others – to illustrate life in the ironically-dubbed ‘Charm City.’
Cam Hart doesn’t need Hollywood. Notre Dame’s fourth-year cornerback has his own life – and hardscrabble roots.
“It was tough. Growing up with a single mom, her being young at that, raising my sister and I, there were a lot of tough moments,” Hart said. “And growing up in inner-city Baltimore is just a tough area to grow up in. There were a lot of hardships that we had to overcome, and we did. My sister (Tamira) is doing extremely well, I’m doing extremely well and I couldn’t thank my mom enough.”
Almost too young to comprehend, the lithe Hart – a 6-foot-2.5-inch, 198-pound cover-man with wingspan like a condor – carries with him daily the memory of four different times nearly losing his mother, January, before ever cracking middle school hallways.
“My mom had to battle three brain aneurysms and then also a neck tumor,” said Hart, who has 11 career passes defended in 24 games. “I was young at the time, eight or nine years old, but just thinking about that and thinking about the possibility that I could lose my mom, that’s one of the hardest things I had to conceptualize at that age.
“Obviously, she got through it and we’re all good now. But that’s one of the hardest things I’ve had to get through.”
Whereas coaches oftentimes urge players to get comfortable being uncomfortable on the field, Hart is as at ease hurdling adversity as helping seal a top-25 win last season against Wisconsin with a pair of interceptions.
His is a path filled with all the cracked sidewalks, iron-barred windows and cautionary tales of friends whose visions, necessitated by those unflinching environs, carried with them goals only to survive the day in Baltimore, America’s 20th-most populous city but which per crime data is safer than only 4% of metropolitan areas across the United States.
Hart adopted a different viewpoint, even when it meant trudging out of the door of his mother’s/grandmother’s home for the nearly hour-long commute from Baltimore proper to Our Lady of Good Counsel School.
“Thankful for Good Counsel being so far away, there wasn’t much time (for hanging with friends or making those choices),” Hart said. “If I was getting home, I had to do homework, get to bed and wake up by 5 or 6 the next morning to be able to get to school.
“So luckily that was one, and then, two, I think once I made the decision that ‘OK, I want to do something with football, and if I’m going to go to a private school and my mom’s going to make all these sacrifices, then I’ve got to make some sacrifices myself.’”
In a city where allegiances could quite literally mean the difference in life and death, Hart marked a non-negotiable line: His was family.
“That was cutting some people off and cutting some people out of my life that didn’t necessarily have the same goals and aspirations as me,” Hart said. “That was fine for me, those people know it’s all love and they respect the decision. And when I do see them, it’s all love but at a certain point, I can’t hang out with certain people who don’t have the same vision as me.
“And that was completely fine with me.”
Ryan Barnes is another Fighting Irish, Beltway-area success story. And though quite by happenstance, his is another tale of life’s pathways winding from Baltimore to South Bend, Indiana, in direct correlation with Hart.
“When I was in middle school, Good Counsel, they were looking at me and my younger brother to attend high school there so we would go to games, be on the sideline and actually, I remember one game specifically at halftime, Coach let us walk with Cam to the halftime huddle,” said Barnes, the Irish cornerback part of a rotation that could stretch a half-dozen deep for Notre Dame. “And it was pretty cool, the fact that he ended up here and I ended up here. When I was that young, I wasn’t too much into recruiting so I didn’t know that he had ended up here.
“But once I committed, I heard from him and it was a great feeling to have someone here from the area, who’s had a lot of similar experiences as me. Ever since I got here, he’s been one of those guys who’s really taken me under his wings and showed me the ropes of ND and how to be successful.”
Hart’s example shines daily now for the entire position group, according to Irish cornerbacks coach Mike Mickens.
“Cam’s very mature, he keeps things in but the way he goes about his business, you know that everything is important to him and you know that he’s doing everything he can for his family,” said Mickens, a Dayton, Ohio, native who starred as a cornerback at the University of Cincinnati. “He’s very family-oriented and just a mature kid.”
Unsurprisingly, family is once again front and center as Hart readies for what could be his final season beneath the outstretched arms of ‘Touchdown Jesus.’
In addition to working constantly to help secure the future of his mother and stay in lock-step with the older sister whose name adorns his left biceps, Hart also is carrying with him the poignant determination of playing this season for his late grandmother, Faith.
It’s been just three months since her death from lung cancer, May 20, and Hart pauses, hand on his heart, to discuss how he is going to honor this season one of those three seminal female figures in his life.
“I dedicate a lot to her, dedicate a lot to her,” said Hart. “I wake up, I have a little picture of her in my locker, I have her name written in my mirror, I dedicate every day I wake up and just grateful and I’m going to live for my grandma.”
Mickens, a brief pro career of his own as backdrop, sees in Hart all the requisite traits for a potential NFL future. It’s as much because Hart’s approach off the field, Mickens shares, as his approach between the lines.
“I just think it comes with maturity and the way he approaches everything every day,” Mickens said. “How he goes about his business is very structured, very thoughtful in all that he does; that’s what I love about him, just the way he does everything.
“Whether it’s school or football practice, film study, he does everything that a pro wants. That’s a great thing about him.”
Make no mistake, Hart is self-made but his bedrock is family. He beams in discussing Tamira’s life, with her two children, marriage and impending college graduation. His uncle Zac Dingle – “He’s not even my uncle, he’s my second cousin” – is the father figure whose sacrifices include those for his own son, CoJo, as well as Cam Hart.
And, of course, January Pridget; hers a life undeterred by all those health struggles or “working two or three different jobs a year at Johns Hopkins, always.”
“As Zac started to see that I wanted to start making the right decisions and actually had something going for myself, he took the role and played the dad figure in my life,” Hart said. “He’s guided me throughout the way, helped me make some big decisions in my life and he’s supported me in everything I want to do. And with the football thing, since my mom doesn’t really know what’s going on football-wise, she watches it and supports it but doesn’t really know the ins and outs of recruiting or all this other grimy stuff out there, he makes sure I was protected in that fashion. I’m really appreciative of him as well.
“That’s why I’m so driven to make sure that, even if I don’t make it to the NFL, even if I have to work for the rest of my life, that’s going to be the person I take care of because she’s made so many sacrifices for me. I couldn’t even articulate or put into words for you, but she’s just everything I have and she’s done everything for me, sacrificed so much, sacrificed her childhood – we basically grew up together – because she had to sacrifice that to raise me. So I’m just going to pay her back as much as I possibly can.”
Perhaps, then, Hollywood’s next Baltimore story will find its breakthrough moment right here in the shadows of a Golden Dome; a path from ‘Charm City’ to one of college athletics’ most charmed environments.
