(BALTIMORE – August 22, 2026) — Now, this legend story is very special. Derick Boyd is my elementary school classmate. We are the same age, born around the same time, and we have maintained our friendship for more than half a century. That alone is a blessing. Conducting these “Legends of Baltimore: Beyond the Game” interviews has helped me better understand my own childhood. Although sports was certainly a part of my story, my childhood was also deeply connected to business. While Derick and the other young ballplayers were handling the rock, I was handling newspapers. I had an AFRO paper route. Looking back, that paper route fits perfectly with what I do today. I was distributing Black news then. Today, I publish BMORENews.com. I also remember The Pocket, a small Baltimore publication produced by Earl Koger that would appear every Friday around Penn-North. I remember The Nightlifer and other independent Black publications that documented our community in ways the mainstream press never could. I even tried publishing my own paper for about six months. The signs were always there. My purpose was already revealing itself. I just did not recognize it yet. Derick’s gift was basketball. And make no mistake about it: The brother was a beast. But the most remarkable thing about Derick Boyd was never simply what he could do with a basketball. It was how he treated people. Derick was a superstar outside of school, but he never acted like one. He never treated the rest of us as though we were beneath him. We were his boys, and he would tell you that himself. That has never changed. To this day, Derick remains extraordinarily humble—Timmy Greene humble. Michael “Silk” Dukes humble. Choo Smith humble. If you met him without knowing his history, you might never realize how good he was. That is one of the reasons this story matters. A Friendship Built at Matthew A. Henson Our friendship began at Matthew A. Henson Elementary School, which produced an extraordinary circle of students who remain connected decades later: Derick Boyd, Gordon Wilder, Kenny Parks, Reginald Powell, Dennis Fountain, Irvin Nore, Malcolm Hamm, Earl Lane, Antoinette Gatewood-Sykes, Lisa Carroll, Gerald Quarles, William White, John McCauley—and yours truly, Doni Glover. And that is only the beginning of the list. Derick calls us “life friends.” Not casual friends. Not temporary friends. Not people who disappear when circumstances change. Life friends. At the beginning of our interview, before I could ask him a single basketball question, Derick turned the microphone around on me. “Every time I think about my brother and how uniquely special you are, it is represented by who your life friends are,” he said. “Not friend-friends. Life friends.” Then he spoke about the importance of BMORENews.com telling the stories that larger media outlets overlook. “You highlight those little things in our communities,” he said. “Keep doing what you’re doing because nobody is doing what you’re doing in that city from a media standpoint. With the pen and…