Last month, when he officially retired from the NFL, Jonathan Ogden pledged his loyalty to his adopted hometown, proclaiming, "I'm a Baltimore Raven for life."
Unbeknownst to the other assembled onlookers at the Castle in Owings Mills that day, Ogden's younger brother and former Ravens teammate, Marques, had already made his own commitment to Baltimore. Starting in summer 2006, Ogden had been studying the construction business in the hopes of starting his own commercial company.
However, he had more in mind than just creating a post-career livelihood, he said recently. "My goal for all of this is to rebuild Baltimore," he said, "for the people here, with the people here."
By that, Ogden means he wants to not only help redevelop areas that desperately need it, but also to change the nature and culture of those areas, return basic services and a true neighborhood mind-set - and employ workers who either lost their chances to support themselves and their families or never learned how.
That includes, he said, everybody from former athletes with no prospects beyond playing to people who have been in and out of jail. Eventually, he wants to add a nonprofit training and education venture to his for-profit business.
"The commitment is here. It is not to just make money, it's to help people," the younger Ogden said. "It's a chance to change things for you, for your family, to take your faults, put them behind you and move on to what you're truly capable of doing, for your family and your community."
The vision is a long way off because Ogden is still establishing his own credentials in this business. What he does have now - a company called Kayden Premier Enterprises, located in East Baltimore and named after his niece and nephew (Jonathan's children), and a steadily growing list of contracts - did not come overnight. Nor, he said, did it come because of his last name, or his millionaire brother's handouts.
"He loves me, he supports me," Marques Ogden, 27, said of Jonathan, who has his own foundation that does loads of charity work in the city. "But he didn't put a dime into this. That's why it's that much more important to me."
He took no shortcuts. In the past two years, Ogden completed an internship with Doracon, Ronald Lipscomb's company; attained his city and state construction licenses; started Kayden with partner and longtime family friend Arthur Pearlman; and met (and impressed) numerous area contractors.
