UPTOWN — Cornell Freeney remembers the day, more than a decade ago, when his brothers warned him not to go to Clarendon Park anymore or "bad things would happen."
He was 12 at the time, and at first he didn't understand.
"You grow up playing with these kids," he said. Although his family lived in what he calls "JJ Pepper's territory" near the 4800 block of North Sheridan Road, he went to Clarendon Park often to play with other kids in the neighborhood.
"My older brothers, they were in gangs," he said, and they warned him he could be recognized as their brother, or just as an outsider from the other side of Sheridan, and be in danger.
Soon after, he realized he "was slowly getting onto that path as well" and went looking for something more positive. He found it at at CircEsteem, an Uptown-based team-building program for kids founded in 2001 by a former Barnum & Bailey's circus clown.
Last week, Freeney told his own story after a CircEsteem event in Uptown showcasing fifth-graders from McCutcheon and Brennemann elementary schools to their peers, parents and community. It's a story of being just like them, making mistakes and bouncing back to make his own path.
"I didn’t want them doing the things I was starting to do, and things I knew my brothers were doing. I decided I wanted to do something positive. Something that wasn’t hanging out in the streets."
Before he found circus studies, Freeney got a taste of gymnastics on a tumbling team, but he didn't find it challenging. When his mother suggested he try CircEsteem, then a new program in his neighborhood, he was hesitant at first, because "I didn’t want to be a clown," he said.
But as pressures from the gangs in his neighborhood grew, Freeney felt his options shrinking. So he signed up for his first class.
Freeney showing off his tumbling skills in his youth. [Courtesy of CircEsteem]
Uptown's Unique Challenges
Freeney returned to the school in Uptown as a teacher in 2015. Still housed at Alternatives Youth Inc., 4730 N. Sheridan Road, CircEsteem has expanded dramatically in the intervening 14 years.
"We do a lot of outreach programs," Freeney said. "We’re doing work on the South Side and we’re doing work all the way in Winnetka."
But in Uptown there are unique challenges, which Freeney has so far overcome, prompting him to lend his talents to personally help the school renew its focus on its original mission: bringing kids with differences together.
Last week's showcase focused on the newest class of students: 25 each from McCutcheon, 4865 N. Sheridan Road, and Brennemann, 4251 N. Clarendon Ave., which are in opposing gang territories.
"Youth from these schools often experience confrontations with each other, purely because of the side of the street their school was built on," Ald. James Cappleman (46th) recently wrote in a community newsletter to his ward.
"I've had many long conversations with youth from both gangs and when I've tried to get them to speak about their ongoing war with each other, both sides have said they don't know the reason, 'but it's always been this way.'"
Ald. James Cappleman (46th) and CircEsteem Executive Director Dan Roberts speaking at Thursday's performance. [DNAinfo/ Josh McGhee]
Freeney understood.
"I remember growing up it was all fun and games, where it was Lakeside versus Clarendon and we were all throwing snowballs, slamming each other into the snow," he said.
But eventually it wasn't just "throwing snowballs. It turned into throwing fists, guns and things like that."
Recalling his own journey, Freeney saw an opportunity for CircEsteem to step in.
"I thought 'Wow, there’s two schools in walking distance from our home base that probably don’t really know about us," he said. "If we get the kids early enough doing something positive, they won’t be interested in joining gangs."
CircEsteem's headquarters sist right on the border of the warring gangs' territories, he said. The building has a history as a boundary landmark.
"Alternatives is that part where 'This is as far as you can go,'" Freeney said.
Life Inside The Wheel
Freeney joined CircEsteem in 2002 when he was about a year older than his current students are today. He himself was a student at McCutcheon when he first felt drawn off the straight-and-narrow path.
"I was already making those decisions. I was already getting into some trouble with the police," he said. Freeney was kicked out of the Uptown grade school, "mainly because of bullying," he said.
"It's crazy how now, I don't know how many years later, I'm back working at that school as one of the leaders in the building."
When he joined as a kid, CircEsteem occupied Freeney's time teaching him "cool flips," gymnastics and circus arts. But he was still dodging the dangers of street life on his way home from training.
"My brothers were like, 'We can't go over to McDonalds,'" he said. "I haven’t gone over to Clarendon Park since I was 12 years old, and it's with good reason ... I don't know if people would remember my face, or be like, 'We know whose brother you are.' I’ve been so far removed from that lifestyle," he said, but it's still something "I have to think about."
By the time he was in high school, he would begin training at 5 a.m., practicing tumbling, trampoline, juggling, diabolo, partner acrobatics, duo trapeze and Russian bar. But he a knack for the gym wheel, which became his main act.
After morning practice, his coach would personally drop him off at school.
Cornell Freeney performing in the gym wheel. [Courtesy of CircEsteem]
His perseverance paid off. In 2007, Freeney competed in the World Championships of Wheel Gymanastics in Austria, where he finished seventh in all-around performance, sixth in spiral and second in vault.
After high school, he was offered a job on Royal Caribbean cruise ships, which took him around the world, through the Caribbean, Asia and Europe. He would spend three months on the ship and return to school at Illinois State University courtesy of a scholarship from State Rep. Greg Harris, he said.
One thing that drew him to Illinois State? "The college had a circus program."
"So since I was 12, there’s never been a time I wasn’t doing circus," he said.
Leaving the neighborhood, and then returning as an adult, made Freeney realize how important it was to support the next generation of kids in Uptown.
"As I was growing up I saw some of the people I was in school [with begin] to hang out by JJ Peppers and McDonalds. They were two opposite gangs. I went away to college, I came back and they were still in the same spot. I worked on cruise ships, I came back and they were still in the same spot," he said.
Paying It Forward
In 2013, Freeney earned his degree in elementary education and spent the next two years performing, before unexpectedly finding himself back at CircEsteem.
"I said 'Hey, before I get a real job and start doing the boring nine-to-five, I want to do two years where I’m just performing and living the life of luxury,'" Freeney said. To him, the life of luxury was one immersed in circus-related work.
After that, "I was getting ready to look for teaching jobs, but the more I applied for teaching jobs, the more it seemed like something I didn’t want to do."
Around that time, Maribeth Joy, who served as CircEsteem's executive director from 2009-2015, asked Freeney to join the staff, and he jumped at the chance.
At the 15th Anniversary Gala in October, Dan Roberts, Joy's successor, and Freeney agreed there was a huge need "to do more in [the Uptown] community." So the pair began to make a plan.
Cornell Freeney juggling at the 2016 gala. [Courtesy of CircEsteem]
The Snowball Effect
After the kids took their bows at the end of last week's showcase, Freeney stepped to the front of the stage to give CircEsteem T-shirts to two teachers; one of them was P.E. instructor Karen Jasinski, who had been at McCutcheon when Freeney was a student there.
For Freeney, it's an example of the ripple effect of a small opportunity can mean at a young age.
"You grow up playing basketball [and] football with these people, then once you turn 15-18, you all hate each other just because the side of whatever territory you come from," he said.
"If we get the kids working together at a young age, hopefully, when they get to that age when they have all those other temptations, they’ll be like, 'I stood on his shoulders,' or, 'We juggled together. I can’t have that attitude towards him because of our past experiences,'" Freeney said.
It seems to be working, at least a little for 11-year-old Tamiru Selewondim of McCutcheon.
For the show, he learned "that we had to work together with the other students and work hard" and also "made friends with the [students from the] other school."
"It was fun, and we got to try new things," Tamiru said. "This is the first time I got to meet them."
Freeney's current class is made up of fifth-graders who he said are at the "snowball level," where the beef ends with a bully slamming you into a snow pile or whipping a snowball at your face.
"This is only the start of it. Right now, they’re not having those thoughts," he said. "But next year they’re going to be in sixth grade ... they’re getting ready to be exposed to some stuff once they get to middle school."
While violence might segregate the neighborhood, Freeney hopes the circus arts can help keep the young ones from getting trapped in the cycle and steering their own gymnastics wheel.
"If we can get one of these kids to join this program, that’s one kid who we’ve shown a new path, similar to how I was shown" an alternative, Freeney said.
[Courtesy of CircEsteem]
