When they first met four years ago, Kenyon Murray was straight with Demetrius Harper right from the start.

Murray, the former Iowa basketball star, was coach of the Prairie freshman basketball team. Harper, in only his second year in the College Community school district after being expelled from McKinley Middle School with two weeks to go in the seventh grade, was trying out for the team.

“I knew who he was,” Murray says, “that he was supposed to be a pretty good athlete. He was kind of shy. But he kept looking down at his feet when he was talking to me.

“I said that showed disrespect and that he needed to look at people eye-to-eye.”

Other than being the coach, the then 12-year-old boy didn’t know who was telling him this.

“I didn’t like him much at first,” Harper says now. “Really, I thought he was kind of a jerk.”

It would be too easy to say that their first encounter was the turning point in the young man’s life. There have been many others who have touched his life, as well. But what was once an uncertain future now seems as bright as his hallmark smile.

Harper, a senior who turns 17 in December, is a top receiver and kick returner on the resurgent Prairie football team and will be one of the veterans on a rebuilding basketball squad. He’s also an all-state sprinter.

A model student now, he’s built his grades up to a solid B average. And he’ll be attending college next year, hopefully on an athletic scholarship.

“I feel so blessed,” says his mother, Maggie Cross.

“Demetrius and me, we’ve had our struggles. But for him to be where he is now. I’m so proud of him.

“We’ve had a lot of help along the way. A lot of real good people have cared for him and didn’t give up on him. Without them, I don’t where we’d be. When they came into our life, they did things I couldn’t do on my own.”

Murray, especially, has been a male role model for her son. The bond between the two has been a special one, so strong and true that Harper is living this school year with Murray and his family in their four-bedroom home in the College Community district.

"I always wanted what was best for Demetrius,” says his mom, who lives in a Cedar Rapids apartment with two toddler sons and works full-time at Whirlpool in Amana in addition to Wendy’s. “When Kenyon suggested it, I knew it would be best.”

For Murray, who works as a dental supply representative as well as running the non-profit Legacy youth basketball program, having Harper live with them seemed the way to help him prepare for life after high school.

“We want to put Demetrius in a position to be successful, both in academics and athletics,” says Murray, who has served as a mentor to countless at-risk youth through his basketball program and coaching. “In his case, he can use athletics to reach his goals. We want to make it as smooth as possible for him.”

Murray asked a friend from the University of Iowa to do a personality profile to see which classes suited Harper’s interests and has arranged help for his college entrance exams.

“We can provide the tools,” says Murray. “But De has to want it and do the work.”

Harper says he doesn’t know where he’ll go to college or what he wants to study. He does know he wants to play football and probably run track.

“He’s such a good debater,” says Murray’s wife Michelle, a radiology technician at St. Luke’s Hospital. “I’m thinking politics or law.”

For the first time in his life, really, Harper is enjoying what could be considered a normal home life, with a bedroom to call his own. With 12-year-old twin sons Kris and Keegan, 6-year-old daughter McKenna and little puppies Bella and Star, he’s become part of the Murray family.

“Four all-star athletes,” says Michelle, “and not one of them can hit the laundry basket.”

It’s clearly a loving, sports-filled home, even if first-grader McKenna says it’s sometimes “boring” with so many boys around. “I wish he was a sister,” she says.

For his part, Harper says, “I feel very lucky. There aren’t many people that get the help I’ve gotten.

“I didn’t want to be just another statistic. Since eighth grade, everything’s changed for the better.”

Before then, life was chaotic, admits his mother, who maintains a very close relationship with her son. “We’ve been through a lot together,” she says.

She was a 16-year-old high school junior when he was born, living in the little town of McNeil, Ark. Working at a chicken plant and a fast food restaurant, she raised her son up to the age of five but then sent him to live with his dad, his new wife and her five children two hours away in Little Rock.

“I was just a child myself,” says Cross. “I thought it would be the right thing for Demetrius to be in a two-parent house.”

That didn’t work out, however, so when he was 10 the two of them boarded a bus to Marion to be with other family members who had moved here. For four months, they lived in a one-bedroom apartment along with Demetrius’ grandmother and three aunts.

They moved across the street from McKinley for him to start seventh grade, and she says it was a shock when he was expelled so close to the end of the year.

“He’s always been a good kid, and everybody’s always loved Demetrius,” she says. “They never gave me a warning that he was in trouble. I think it was a misunderstanding on something he said. And I really think they stereotyped me as a young single mother who didn’t care.”

Taking in the young daughter of one of her sisters who was killed in a car accident, she and her son lived the next two years in a transitional housing complex for single women with children.

“I wanted to get away from the negativity in the neighborhood,” Cross explains.

Their apartment just happened to be in the College Community district. There, Demetrius thrived.

“Teachers and everybody were so good to us,” says his mom. “I was working two jobs, and coaches would pick Demetrius up in the morning for practice.

“Lots of people just went above and beyond for us. I’m so thankful for that. All of them helped me raise my son. Because of them, he’s got a future for himself.”

They moved to an apartment in Fairfax when he was a sophomore. But, because her jobs were then in Cedar Rapids, she moved back to live in an apartment close to a bus route when she couldn’t drive in winter weather.

Since he had so many friends and classmates in Fairfax, Demetrius spent his junior year living with buddy Tom Frieden and his family. The two had been close since Harper’s sophomore season on the varsity football team when then head coach Craig Jellinek threw him in as a surprise starter at wide receiver.

“It was my first game on offense,” Demetrius recalls. “But Tom and Jacob Van Winkle and some of the other guys told me just to shake it off if I made a mistake. They wouldn’t let me fail.”

In many ways, that’s been the story of his life. And for his mother, too.

Cross says in order to set an example for her son, she earned her high school equivalency degree and is now taking classes at Kirkwood Community College. “With Demetrius going to college, I want to be able to help support him,” she explains.

She won't be alone, of course.

“Demetrius is a special kid,” says Murray. “I could tell that right off, the way other kids gravitated toward him. He was always a leader.

“But I believe every kid has the potential to be great. Sometimes, it just takes someone to believe in them before they can believe in themselves.”