DaytonDailyNews.com

OXFORD — He was just 6 years old, but he'll never forget when he left his grandparents and mother back in the Democratic Republic of Congo — then called Zaire — and came to America.

"My sister was 10 and my brother was 8, and they dressed us up in the suits our dad had sent us," said Miami University track athlete Cedric Diakabana. "I remember my little suit. It was a gray with matching coat and pants.

"We had to take a boat across the Congo River from Kinshasa to Brazzaville, and it was pretty bizarre. It was real crowded, and all these people tried sneaking on board. Our mom was coming to the U.S. later, but she did make the trip across the river with us and she kept pushing people away from us, saying, 'They're going to see their dad. They're going to America!' "

Diakabana's father had come to the United States for work soon after Cedric was born, and now with political turmoil entrenching Zaire, the rest of the family was leaving, too. The three kids would fly on their own to Portugal, then JFK Airport in New York, where Cedric would truly meet his father for the first time.

"It was sad leaving my grandparents, but I was excited about what was ahead," he said with a smile and a shake of the head. "I wanted to come to America because all the cartoons we watched on TV were from America. I remember the movie 'Rocky,' it was dubbed in French like the cartoons, and Michael Jackson's music — to me, all that was America."

Once his mom rejoined them and they'd settled in Pawtucket, R.I., he learned — thanks to his folks' insistence on education and embracing others — a new meaning:

"For us, the American Dream was about more than just being successful. It was about opening doors for others. It was about doing your part."

And he and his brother, Heriter, known as Dee, have done that.

After graduating from a prep boarding school in St. Louis, Dee joined the Army, and while serving as a Humvee gunner with the 91st Engineers Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division, he was wounded by a rocket-propelled grenade outside Baghdad.

Awarded the Purple Heart — and still with three pieces of shrapnel in his shoulder — he's about to graduate from West Point where he was on the football team and played rugby.

Cedric, who'll graduate this spring from Miami, runs the 800 and a relay for the RedHawks track team. He has worked three jobs on campus and, in the past couple of years, has become a community volunteer.

He's gone door-to-door — especially in some of the toughest projects back home in Rhode Island — not only to register young voters, but also to involve some of the most disenfranchised citizens in the American Dream concept being renewed by Barack Obama, who today — Jan. 20 — becomes the first black man ever to serve as President of the United States.

Impressed with Obama

Diakabana began taking a keen interest in politics during the 2004 presidential election.

"My brother was in Iraq then, and I had lots of questions," he said. " 'What's going on with the troops? How long is he going to be there. What's our way out?'

"At the time George Bush was running for re-election, and John Kerry was running against him, and there was a lot of conflict that divided America.

"I knew a little bit about Obama because after high school, I'd gone to college a year at Principia in Illinois. But when he spoke at the Democratic National Convention — and his thing was about a united America — I was like, 'Wow.' "

After taking a year off from school to work back home, he wrote letters to colleges, received an invite to Miami and, after a semester at Oxford, earned a scholarship.

He joined Students for Obama and soon took something the candidate said to heart:

"He had talked about change and the idea of initiating it, not just waiting for it to happen for you. And one day it just hit me, 'What am I waiting for?' "

Back in Rhode Island last summer, he went to the inner city housing projects because he thought no one else would go to them.

"And you know what?" he said. "It surprised me. The young people there were open and receptive. It felt good to help get them involved."

Athletes march

Scores and scores of Miami University athletes — in a few cases entire RedHawks sports teams — bundled up against the wintry cold and gathered at the Memorial Park Pavilion in Uptown Oxford on Monday to take part in the community's commemoration of the Rev. Martin Luther King. Jr.

Diakabana was there with his track and field teammates. Across from them and in full force was Miami's ninth-ranked hockey team. Behind them was the men's basketball team, which a couple of hours later would board a bus for Bowling Green, where they play tonight.

Athletes participated in a reading of Dr. King's powerful "Letter from Birmingham Jail" speech, listened as children read excerpts from the "I Have a Dream" speech and heard from Miami President David C. Hodge, who linked past and present when he talked of the history made by Dr. King and now Obama.

The athletes then marched through the snow-carpeted Miami campus, ending up at Hall Auditorium for a moving program on King.

"As athletes, I think this is really good for us," Diakabana said. "We're so engaged now, and this shows us we can be involved in other things besides just sports. We can take part in our community, our everyday lives.

"It's an exciting time, and I like the way Obama is trying to inspire us to greater things.

"As athletes we should connect to that. That's just what the team captain or the coach does when you're down. It's like in those movies — like 'Hoosiers' or 'Remember the Titans' — when things are bad, someone gives that one major speech to fire you up.

"Right now, we're getting fired up by this guy who wants to lead us in tough times. That's what we need. We don't need someone beating us down and making us afraid. We need someone to tell us, 'You've done this before; you can do it again.' "

And no one knows that more than Diakabana, once a little 6-year-old boy in the new gray suit who left Africa and headed straight into the American Dream.