Kevin Salters interview, 14 October 2025

Abstract

In this 2025 interview, lifelong East Cleveland resident and entrepreneur Mr. Kevin Salters describes his childhood, his family’s move to the city, and the strong sense of community that shaped his youth. He recounts his service in the U.S. Army, his transition into welding, and his eventual shift into property rehabilitation and long-term homeownership in East Cleveland. Salters discusses the development of his rental portfolio, the role of his family in managing properties, and the pride he takes in reinvesting in his own neighborhood. He also reflects on his leadership in organizing 13 years of community block parties, his involvement in local associations, and the cultural importance of the annual Shaw High School Reunion Weekend.

Interviewee

Salters, Kevin (interviewee)

Interviewer

Mays, Nicholas S. (interviewer)

Project

East Cleveland

Date

10-14-2025

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

74 minutes

Recommended Citation

"Kevin Salters interview, 14 October 2025" (2025). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 757009.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1406

Related Resources

East Cleveland @ Cleveland Voices

Transcript

Nick Mays [00:00:00] My name is Dr. Nicholas Mays and today is October 14, 2025. I am here in East Cleveland on Millionaires Row with Mr. Kevin Salter. A lifelong East Clevelander entrepreneur and community leader. Mr. Salter has built a legacy through housing investment, family entrepreneurship and civic engagement, all while preserving the pride, spirit and history of this community. [00:00:28] Today we’ll explore his journey, his love for East Cleveland, and his vision for the city’s future. Welcome, Mr. Salters. Thank you for being with us.

Kevin Salters [00:00:39] Thank you.

Nick Mays [00:00:40] Can you start by telling us your name, age and date of birth?

Kevin Salters [00:00:45] My name is Kevin Salters. I just turned 64 in September […].

Nick Mays [00:00:55] And your date of birth?

Kevin Salters [00:00:56] [1961].

Nick Mays [00:00:58] Thank you. So, Mr. Salters, I want to, I want to begin with early life and your East Cleveland roots. Can you, can you, can you first tell me about your early years in growing up in East Cleveland and how your family came to East Cleveland?

Kevin Salters [00:01:19] Well, we lived over by the Lee Harvard area. I was going to Whitney Young. Then we transferred over here to East Cleveland. My parents had purchased a house up the street and when we moved over, I was still going to school across town. Then we waited for, I think it was like it might have been a mid school year. [00:01:44] We were going to wait till the end, but I ended up transferring over and I went to Kirk Junior High and then from, you know, we.

Nick Mays [00:01:57] So you were born in Cleveland?

Kevin Salters [00:01:59] I was born in Cleveland, moved to East Cleveland in eighth grade and I’ve been here ever since. Pretty. Yeah. What’s here in East Cleveland? I’ve been here in East Cleveland since then, except for my military time. Other than that, I’ve been in East Cleveland all the time.

Nick Mays [00:02:16] Can you, can you talk about your, your early years kind of growing up as you know, you said you were at your eight when you, when you moved to East Cleveland, but if you can recall just growing up as a, as a youth or teenager.

Kevin Salters [00:02:33] Yes. When I moved to East Cleveland, it was nothing like it is now. It was a better city at that time. And I had a lot of friends. You know, we played football every day. We did it all day long. You know, you had to be in when the street light came on. We had picked up a ball. [00:02:49] Every day we got out of school, we’d pick up a football. We’d play, play in wintertime snow. We would play in the backyard, play in the street. You know, we would do a lot of racing. When I was younger, we had raced from light pole to light pole, which was a pretty long distance. [00:03:04] Especially as a child. And we were into bikes. We made our own bikes. We got different parts from other bikes and we put them together. We made them. My father was a body man. He used to work on cars, used to paint them and everything. So we would strip the bikes down, take them to him and he would do a paint job on them and we’ll put them back together. [00:03:24] We had gold chains. We had whatever was new out. We had them up and down the street and we put them together and raced each other. We had a good time. I had an excellent childhood.

Nick Mays [00:03:36] So you live on the same street as an adult. You live on the same street for which you’ve moved when you were a young child with your parents?

Kevin Salters [00:03:47] Yes, I purchased a house a few doors down from where I grew up. Yeah. After I came out to service.

Nick Mays [00:03:56] So can you give us some context or history of Millionaires Row and why is it called Millionaires Row?

Kevin Salters [00:04:03] Well, it’s called Millionaires Row because Rockefeller, he started here in East Cleveland and like Kirk Junior High. And if I’m not mistaken, I believe that’s where he lived. And Forest Hill park was his backyard. He ended up donating that, the park and the school to the city of East Cleveland. And you know, because, I mean, like his backyard was just like a big park, you know, I think they let Cleveland Heights use part of it now at this time. [00:04:30] But when I was, you know, when I was younger, it was mostly all East Cleveland had it all. And it was a real nice park. We used to go up there. You know, you get actually. You could fish in the pond. You know, we used to have picnics up there all the time. [00:04:43] They had the swings, they had everything. It was a really nice park back in the day.

Nick Mays [00:04:49] What did your parents do growing up?

Kevin Salters [00:04:52] My mom worked at Bobby Brooks. She was. She made clothes. You know, she tailored there. My father worked for Chrysler Corporation and then he had his own body shop. You know, he had multiple shops. And he really was into cars, into fast cars, you know, like mg. Back then it was the mg, the Jaguar, you know, he had a lot of cars. [00:05:16] He fixed them up really nice. It reminds me of a time he bought us two cars. He bought me a Nova and he bought my cousin Greg, he bought him a Nova and my father customized them. He painted them. I put a hood scoop on mine and on my bro, on my cousins, he put a bird on the front of it. [00:05:38] Like the Trans Ams. He had a bird on the front of. It was all red. It was candy apple red. Really nice car. Really nice car. Yes.

Nick Mays [00:05:45] Where was your, your dad’s shops? Was it in East Cleveland?

Kevin Salters [00:05:50] No, well, no, it was one out right outside of East Cleveland on Euclid Avenue. But most of them were down like 82nd and Quincy down that way.

Nick Mays [00:05:58] And you say he worked at. For Chrysler?

Kevin Salters [00:06:01] Yes, Chrysler Corporation.

Nick Mays [00:06:03] The Chrysler Corporation. Was that in Cleveland or was that.

Kevin Salters [00:06:06] I think that’s in Youngstown. I think it’s in Youngstown.

Nick Mays [00:06:10] What did you learn from your parents growing up or your father, your mom that still lives with you today?

Kevin Salters [00:06:19] Oh, I learned quite a bit from my parents. One thing with my father, well, one thing I learned was discipline. And my father was. He wasn’t overly strict, but he believed in discipline, he believed in respecting adults. And I learned, I carry that to this day. I taught my children the same way my father taught me how to work on houses, how to work on cars. [00:06:42] You know, I do a lot of that now. I rehab houses for a living pretty much now. And my mom, she was very caring. When we came home from school every day, we always had a meal. She made sure our clothes were decent to go to school. She made sure we had money for lunch. [00:07:01] I mean, they made sure we had our rooms together. And like I said, I had a very nice childhood.

Nick Mays [00:07:10] Outside of your parents, who or what made the biggest impact on you during your school years? Whether it was teachers, neighbors, community figures.

Kevin Salters [00:07:23] Probably some of my football coaches. Some of my football coaches. You know, I had a lot of respect. Coach pledger, I really had a lot of respect for him. He was a really nice guy.

Nick Mays [00:07:33] In what way did he impact?

Kevin Salters [00:07:35] Because when I first started playing like Grandpappy Hill, I don’t know if you guys are familiar with Grandpappy Hill. It’s a huge hill we used to train on in East Cleveland. It’s in Forrest Hill Park. And that hill was rough. It was rough trying to run up and down that hill. And that was part of our training. [00:07:52] And you know, he would talk to us, talk to us as a group and give us inspiration to tackle the hill, get better in our ability to play football, you know.

Nick Mays [00:08:09] What do you remember about East Cleveland during your youth? Whether it was the neighborhood atmosphere, events, traditions, anything that stood out.

Kevin Salters [00:08:18] Growing up, I remember I had a lot of friends. I remember going over my friends houses. You know, we were really into cars. And when I was 16, like all my buddies, we all had cars. We did a lot of work on them. We used to go to the Drive in, we had our girlfriends. [00:08:35] We’d go to the Drive in every weekend. Yeah, we had a lot of fun like that back then. They came out with these things. They look like on a police car, like the lights on top of a police car and you plug them in your cigarette lighter and they would go just like a police car. [00:08:52] Well, we didn’t know that we were breaking the law, but we would put those in our. Yeah, we did. I guess we did. We would put them on top of our car sometime. Speed down Euclid Avenue and plug them in and watch the cars move out of the way. And I remember one day we stopped. [00:09:08] I mean, we got pulled over by the police. We weren’t doing it at the time, but he saw the lights back there and he said, if you ever caught us doing that, that we were going to get arrested. So we stopped at that point once we realized how serious it really was. And I remember that clearly.

Nick Mays [00:09:25] Can you recall businesses that existed at the time and then also too. It’s a two part question. Businesses in general that existed. This is like, you know, junior high, high school, right? Youth. And then two black businesses in East Cleveland.

Kevin Salters [00:09:48] Well, businesses at that time. We had, actually we had a car dealership here in East Cleveland. We had a bowling alley, we had a movie theater. This was really a thriving city back when I was young. It was like one of the. As far as one of the black cities back then, if I’m not mistaken. [00:10:06] I think they did a special on us on East Cleveland back then on 2020, talking about how it was a black city and we were able to run our own businesses and things of that nature. And I remember a lot of the stores, Vipco. I remember one of them. It was a drive through store. [00:10:21] You know, you can get your beverages, you can get whatever you want. That was the first time I ever seen a drive through store miss doing that. There’s a lot of different. Some of the restaurants were black owned. Pretty much that’s what I really remember.

Nick Mays [00:10:35] What about Peter Pan?

Kevin Salters [00:10:37] Peter Pan? Yeah, Peter Pan. Peter Pan was when you went out, when you went out, you went to the club, you came in at night. Peter Pan was the spot to go. I mean, you got like seven wings and fries for like $3.50. I mean, it was real cheap and the wings were really good. [00:10:54] That place was always packed because that’s where everybody went when the club closed. It was a lot of fun. Cars all in the parking lot. We, we were sad to see it go. We were surprised when it went. We didn’t even know what happened. Like, oh, wow, they’re closing. Peter Pan Yeah, the Donut Hole. [00:11:09] We used to call it the Donut Hole too. Peter Pan, we called it the Donut Hole because they served donuts in there too.

Nick Mays [00:11:15] So it’s a food desert today. But do you recall any supermarkets or.

Kevin Salters [00:11:21] Yeah, we had supermarkets. The latest supermarket we had just closed recently. City of Change, of course, has done a lot of changes, but yeah, back then we had a lot of. It was a bunch of stores. We had a lot of nice restaurants. You know, you can go to. It’s family restaurants. So. [00:11:38] But it’s changed since then.

Nick Mays [00:11:40] What do you remember about the community growing up in terms of, you know, what folks did, or was it working class or middle class? And you know, what, what folks in your neighborhood where they worked at and kind of work they did?

Kevin Salters [00:11:59] I believe it was like middle class. And one thing I do remember seeing, like when you woke up in the morning, almost every car was leaving the driveway. Everybody worked. It was a working class community. I’m not sure what everybody did because I was young at that time. [00:12:17] But like I said, my father did bodywork. He worked at Chrysler also. My mom worked at Bobby Brooks. But everybody did go to work. I did see the people leave and go to work. And that stood. That made me feel like, you know, okay, you know, you need to work, you know, to survive, basically. [00:12:33] You know, you don’t see that nowadays. Like, you know, like, you see it back then where most of the people in the family were working.

Nick Mays [00:12:44] What traditions stood out to you? Did you. Do you. Can you recall, like, having picnics or, you know, street or what we would call black parties? And we’re going to talk about the black parties that, you know, you’re involved with now. But can you recall traditions like that or things like that, like cookouts, parties?

Kevin Salters [00:13:07] Well, back then, when I was younger, I didn’t see any block parties per se in East Cleveland, but I remember when I lived in Warensville, we had block parties. And that was my first introduction to block parties. And they used to bring the ponies and, you know, it was a real nice atmosphere that, you know, it was really nice. [00:13:28] But in East Cleveland, most of the picnics and things that I’ve seen, it was at Forest Hill Park. We always had a picnic at the park. A lot of things went on at the park. That was the place to go.

Nick Mays [00:13:38] Like what? Can you explain? Expand on that?

Kevin Salters [00:13:42] Well, like the Fourth of July, a lot of people would be there at the Fourth of July. You know, we had a good time. It was fireworks, you know. So, yeah, we had a Good time.

Nick Mays [00:13:52] What do you think the park meant? Forest Hill park meant to East Cleveland, and how did they use the space?

Kevin Salters [00:14:01] I think the park meant a lot to East Cleveland because you. You need your nature, you know, and we had. You could see the frogs, you can see the turtles, you see all kind of things like the fish, the ducks, the duck pond. You know, it was a lot of things. And every community should have a park like that, you know, have a park where the children can go, feel safe and have a good time. [00:14:21] Yeah, the park meant a lot. They’re talking about getting it back together now, but, yeah, the park is essential.

Nick Mays [00:14:28] So let’s. Let’s talk about Shaw High School, when you. Did you attend Shaw High School?

Kevin Salters [00:14:36] Yes.

Nick Mays [00:14:36] What year did you graduate?

Kevin Salters [00:14:37] 1980.

Nick Mays [00:14:41] What was those four years in Shaw like? And if you can, you know, recall those four years, what kind of. Were you in sports and how did you occupy your time at Shaw?

Kevin Salters [00:14:56] I loved. I loved East Cleveland. I loved. I loved Shaw High School. We had a good time, you know. You know, everybody got along, you know. Yeah, I played football. I was on the bowling team. You know, it was just my friends. A lot of my friends were into sports and, you know, played different things. [00:15:17] One of my good buddies back then, we had golfing in the school. One of my buddies used to golf. The kids were. You know, it wasn’t any bullying like you have nowadays. It was just everybody got along. It was a good atmosphere. I enjoyed going to school. You know, I had plenty of friends. [00:15:34] I don’t know anyone that got bullied. And like. Like the torment they go through today. It was none of that. It was a peaceful atmosphere.

Nick Mays [00:15:43] What does. And we’ll talk about the Shaw reunion as. As well. But what did. What did Shaw. What does Shaw mean to you today in connection with your own lived experience?

Kevin Salters [00:16:00] Well, what Shaw means to me is that Shaw means to me. Shaw. I feel like Shaw is what I am now. The reason why I am like I am now, because I learned a lot at Shaw. We had very good teachers. East Cleveland gets a bad rap, but back then, East Cleveland was a beautiful school. [00:16:19] And the teachers, they were very helpful if you needed the extra help or anything of that nature. I learned a lot from Shaw. My children learned a lot from Shaw. And that’s why I still live in this community. I want to see it come back to how it was. And I mean, Shaw, East Cleveland made me what I am today. [00:16:37] Shaw High School made me what I am today.

Nick Mays [00:16:42] Hold that for me. I want to see. I wanted to what did you. I wanted it to come back to East Cleveland. Wanted to come back to what it was. I want to hold that for the end and actually unpack that. And then, “D” note for me, East Cleveland, 2020. As a researcher slash detective, I’m gonna find that.

Production Assistant [00:17:10] I do have another question. Which show was it where they did, like, a recap?

Nick Mays [00:17:16] 2020.

Production Assistant [00:17:17] East Cleveland. 2020.

Nick Mays The show is called 2020.

Production Assistant That’s what it’s called.

Nick Mays [00:17:22] Yeah. I remember when I was a kid, my mom used to watch it. It was a news cash show called 2020. Like, 2020. Yeah, that’s why I asked David to hold it.

Nick Mays [00:17:34] Yeah, you’re probably gonna do the same thing. Great minds thinking like it. Like.

Production Assistant [00:17:46] That would be a good transition to see what the city was like.

Nick Mays [00:17:51] And now and have a visual.

Production Assistant [00:17:53] Yeah, visual.

Nick Mays [00:17:54] Have a visual, for sure.

Nick Mays [00:17:57] So note that for me. And then I want to get back to his. His expression of saying, like, you know, I want the. The city to get back to what he used to be. So. Okay, Before. Okay, so we’re going to transition out from. From the. Your youth days or kind of growing up in East Cleveland. [00:18:23] Before I do that, I want to ask you one more question, not as an adult, but as a young person. And it could be anywhere from, you know, when you moved here to even after high school. Do you remember any key moments when you first felt proud to call East Cleveland home?

Kevin Salters [00:18:46] Yeah, well, my cousins would come over because East Cleveland back then was a very nice neighborhood. So we used to come over. The streets were clean. It was trees all around. You know, I just really, really felt proud of being in the city because they said, you know, it’s like upper class to me. [00:19:03] You know, it was. It was really a suburb at that time.

Nick Mays [00:19:08] Okay, so we’re going to transition. Mr. Salters, thank you. A lot of good stuff here to, you know, building a life and career in East Cleveland. First question is you’ve built a career as an entrepreneur and property owner. You know what? Oops. Before we even get there, can you talk about what you did immediately after graduating from Shaw High School?

Kevin Salters [00:19:40] After graduating from Shaw High School, I went to Dyke College and I went to Lakeland College for a while. And then after that, I wanted to change. I wanted to, you know, go somewhere. I wanted to do something different. So I joined the service.

Nick Mays [00:19:52] At that time, did you graduate from those colleges?

Kevin Salters [00:19:56] No, I did not.

Nick Mays [00:19:57] So you joined the service. How long did you do?

Kevin Salters [00:20:00] I did three years in Army, I was in the 82nd Airborne. I was a paratrooper at the time.

Nick Mays [00:20:06] Wow. What do you remember about that experience? I’m not asking you about not war, just experience of being in that unit.

Kevin Salters [00:20:14] It was nice.

Nick Mays [00:20:15] They make movies about that unit.

Kevin Salters [00:20:18] It was really nice. I mean, we did a lot of special type training. You know, we were in the field a lot. We did some things, I mean, you know, but it was really nice Jumping out of airplanes. That was something different. My father was a paratrooper also. And it’s funny because I didn’t join the service and go to be a paratrooper, because my father was. [00:20:37] It just happened that way. When I joined the service, my permanent station was supposed to be in Louisiana, I think. And a buddy of mine was already in the service. He was like. It was Fort Pope they wanted me to go to. And he was like, salters, you don’t want to go there. [00:20:52] It’s swamp country. There’s nothing to do. Man, you got to get out of that. You got to find a way out of that. So when I was in AIT, which is school training, an airborne recruiter came, and I saw him with his beret on, his boots, they were shiny. The blouse, boots, the pants went over the boots. [00:21:09] And I really loved the uniform. He had the beret on, burgundy beret, maroon beret. And I was like, man, I’d like to do that. Saw his airborne patch and so I asked him, what do you have to do to get in? And he was like, that’s what I’m here for, to do some recruiting. [00:21:25] I got all the guys that I was real cool with. All of us went as a buddy system. We all went together, and that’s how I got an 82nd Airborne.

Nick Mays [00:21:34] What was the training like?

Kevin Salters [00:21:36] It was intense. The training was very intense. Yeah, you know, we were in the field a lot. We cooked from the land. We caught rabbits. We cooked food in ammo cans. I mean, you know, it was different.

Nick Mays [00:21:52] How do you trade to jump out of airplanes? One, and then. And then follow that up with your first time jumping off of an airplane.

Kevin Salters [00:22:03] So you go to a school called Fort Benning. It’s in Georgia. Fort Benning, Georgia. You go to a school there and they teach you how to jump out of airplane. They have a mock tower. It’s a 35 foot Mach tower. You jump out and they show you how to position your hands and all of that. [00:22:19] And then you jump off this big platform, probably about as tall as the garage. And then they show you. It’s called the plf parachute landing fall. And they show you how to hit your feet on the ground, roll over so you don’t hurt yourself. And my first jump. I remember my first jump. [00:22:35] Oh, my God. So when they teach you the training in there, it’s like you have to pull your right. If you’re about to collide with someone, each person pull their right riser, which will turn you away. So my very first jump, this guy, he’s coming right into me. I’m like, pull your riser. [00:22:52] Pull your riser. I’m pulling my riser. He’s not pulling his riser. So they teach you if you’re gonna collide with somebody, spread eagle. You spread your legs. You spread your arms just like this. You go into their chute. You don’t go crazy. You go in and just stay like that. You’ll come back out. [00:23:06] So I knew, and what I was afraid of, the bottom chute will steal my air from my chute, which would make me spiral down. So that’s what I was afraid of. I remember when I was going into that parachute, I was saying, I love you, mom. Love you, dad. I thought this was the end. [00:23:24] I remember clearly saying that when I was in the air, I was like, love you, mom. Love you, dad. And I went in and then came out and pulled my riser and went away from him my very first jump. But it didn’t shake me to the point where I didn’t want to do it again. [00:23:38] But it was something. It was really something.

Nick Mays [00:23:41] What year did you go into the service?

Kevin Salters [00:23:43] I went into service in 82. 1982. I came out in 1985.

Nick Mays [00:23:50] So you’ve built a career as an entrepreneur and a property owner right here in east Cleveland. How did that begin?

Kevin Salters [00:24:01] Well, like I said, my father used to work on houses, and he taught me how to work on houses a lot. And so when my father passed, I bought this house, and I was working on it, and I just remember things that he showed me. And I remember doing some ceramic tile. And my sister, her boyfriend, they owned a bar, and he was like, oh, they need a new countertop at their bar. [00:24:27] Well, I never did work for anybody. I just did it for myself. So I was nervous. She was like, they want to know if you would build the bar, you know, do their countertop for them. And I was like, well, I’ve never done that for anybody. I’m not going to charge them, because I didn’t know what I was going to do. [00:24:41] But I did a good job on it. And after that, I felt like, okay, I think I can do this. And then I started, you know, I decided to, you know, I started doing more projects. More projects. Then I left my job and decided to try to make a living out of it.

Nick Mays [00:24:59] When you say you left your job, what?

Kevin Salters [00:25:01] I worked at a place called Mayfran International. I was a welder, and I used to build steel belt conveyors for, like, Ford, Chrysler, all those places. And I was like, you know, my family, most of my family is entrepreneurs. So I come from a family of entrepreneurs. And it never felt right working for someone anyway. [00:25:19] You know, I never really liked it. So that’s when I decided to make my transition into my own business.

Nick Mays [00:25:25] How many jobs have you had coming out of the service before becoming an entrepreneur?

Kevin Salters [00:25:33] Well, I had a lot of jobs. I had.

Nick Mays [00:25:36] What professions or careers where you would.

Kevin Salters [00:25:40] Well, really the career was the welding job at Mayfran International. I went to school for welding, graduated, and they found me a job at this place called Mayfran. And that was probably the longest job I had. I worked there for 13 years. I had some jobs in between there. When I first got off the service, you know, I actually worked in restaurants for a long time. [00:26:02] I was a cook, and I worked in restaurants for a long time. And my brother and I were talking, and my father. And my father came to my brother and I was like, hey, you guys want to start a business? And we were like, doing what they said. How about a welding shop? [00:26:16] So my brother and I went to school together to start a welding shop. It was called Salter Certified Welding. And we did open up a shop over on Miles. And after my father passed, you know, we end up getting rid of the shop. But I still did a lot of welding on my own. [00:26:35] And I made a lot of equipment for. I made like. I did a lot of welding for people. I used to fix cars. I made wood burning stoves. I’ve done. I made weightlifting equipment. I used to make weightlifting equipment for the YMCAs in Cleveland. I used to weld them, build them, the squat racks, everything. [00:26:52] I did the upholstery, all of it, from start to finish.

Nick Mays [00:26:57] Very interesting. Fascinating. So how was. Take us back to doing the work for your. Your sister and her. Her boyfriend. How did you do. How did you do in that project? And then walk us through what you started doing after.

Kevin Salters [00:27:17] Okay, well, I did a pretty good job on that project. It was. Had a curve in it, and I was wondering if I could do the curves, you know. You know, like the Curves on the countertop. And they still have it there now. They still. I went there not long ago, and it’s still there. [00:27:29] And this was many years ago, and I did a pretty good job. And that gave me the confidence of, you know, now I think I can do anything in a house. I mean, I do fireplaces, I do anything inside a house. I can pretty much do. I do kitchens, I do bathrooms, I do open concepts. [00:27:48] You know, I do just about anything in a house now. Cab, kitchen, cabinets, all of it. I could do just about any of it.

Nick Mays [00:27:56] When did you create. When did you establish your own company after the first job that you did?

Kevin Salters [00:28:04] It was a few years after. What I did was when I left my job, I pulled down my 401k. Everybody was telling me, man, don’t pull on your 401k. That’s your retirement money. I’m like, man, I don’t trust Social Security. I’m gonna do it on my own. I said, my homes that I purchased would be my retirement. [00:28:23] That’s how I’ll survive. So I bought houses, and in East Cleveland, that might have been around. What year was that? That might have been around. I’m not sure. Could have been around 80 something. I decided to buy some houses, and I bought them real cheap. I bought them like $500, a thousand dollars anyhow. [00:28:45] End up I had like 15 of them at one time. And I took them one by one, started in the inside and just redid the whole house. All the plumbing, the electrical. I just did the whole thing till I got each house up and running. So I ended up selling half of them at this time. [00:29:02] I have like, maybe like about eight, seven or eight of them, and they’re all rented out. I’m currently working on one that’s not rented out, and I’ll probably have that one finished in a couple of months and. But yeah, I really loved it. I really love working on houses. You know, I just. [00:29:21] Because I’m very creative and I really like going in there and doing different things, you know.

Nick Mays [00:29:27] Do you work alone or do you have a staff?

Kevin Salters [00:29:32] Well, my company, CAD Properties, is my rental properties. But also I have another company that I work with my uncle, and I work with my uncle Carl and a friend of mine, Val Easley. We work together. It’s called ES wiring and construction. That’s what I. That’s my day job. That’s what I do every day to get up and do that job. [00:29:51] As a matter of fact, I was working today before I had the interview with you, and so that’s what I do for a living. But I’m trying for this to be my last year and go out on my own and just flip a couple of houses a year and just travel and live off my rental properties because now I’m ready to retire.

Nick Mays [00:30:10] Can you talk about what it means to invest in your own community?

Kevin Salters [00:30:16] Yes, what it means to invest in my own community. I tell you, if I had the money that LeBron James have or any of those athletes, I would do in Cleveland what he did in Akron, and I would do in East Cleveland what he did in Akron. Because East Cleveland, East Cleveland really is a gold mine. [00:30:34] This city is really a nice city, people. It’s a hidden gem. It’s a diamond in the rough, you know, and if I had the money and was able to put things back together like our civic center, and do certain things in this community and train some of these young men how to be men, I would love to do that. [00:30:52] That’s my dream and that’s what I’m still working on at this day and time. I’m trying to get to that point and maybe I could reach out to some people like that to come, you know, help come back to this community as a black community and build this community back to what it used to be.

Nick Mays [00:31:10] Is there a pride that you have in investing in East Cleveland through your entrepreneurship of buying homes and redoing it and redeveloping homes and renting it out?

Kevin Salters [00:31:24] Yeah, because I feel like every house that I put back together, that’s a plus for East Cleveland. And getting someone to move in that house, that’s bringing more tax dollars to the city. I think it helps bring this city back together as a whole. A lot of my friends still ask me, like salters, you can move anywhere. [00:31:40] Why do you stay in East Cleveland? I don’t understand that. Why do you stay in East Cleveland? Because it’s the pride. It’s a black community. This is where I want to be. And I know it can still be number one again. I know it could be on top.

Nick Mays [00:31:52] How have your children become part of your work and your entrepreneurship? And what values are you passing or do you hope to pass through the family business?

Kevin Salters [00:32:06] Well, it took a while for my children to get on board with me. They never were against me, but I wanted them to get involved in the housing like I was. But they had their own things they wanted to do, wh

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