A Long Journey Ahead

By: Kimbriell KellyIt’s the day after Christmas and Fred Long knows what to expect. The doorbell rings and his father walks in. “You know it’s my birthday, man, you got me something,” his father says. “I’m like, ‘Come on man! You got to be kidding me dude!’” Long replies.

The Vietnam veteran has two traditions with his son on his birthday. The 61-year-old first tells Long that he’s turning 39—again. Then he asks for cash.

“I know what he’s going to use the money for,” Long said. “He’s always battling with his heroin addiction.”

Still, Long pulls out his wallet. “You only have one mother and one father,” he said. In the back of his mind he knows he shouldn’t. But he thinks about his father’s age and knows there’s little chance his aging father could survive a taxing withdrawal.

Long has already lived enough of his life without his parents. His mother was addicted to crack cocaine. His father became addicted to heroin when Long was just 9. Custody for Long and his eight siblings was turned over to his grandmother, who raised the children during both of his parents’ stints in jail. Eight of the nine children themselves had children before they turned 18. Several didn’t graduate from high school. Three of the children went on to commit felony offenses.

Today, Long’s mother is clean. His father is not. And Long holds the weight of family expectations and hope as the only child to have gone to college and hold a steady job.

While many children with incarcerated parents struggle, with some even following their parents to prison, many others like Long thrive.

Long, 28, coordinates the music program— focusing on issues of anger management, conflict resolution and economics— in the Youth Development department at the Uhlich Children’s Advantage Network, or UCAN. His goal, he said, is to help bring opportunities for young black men to open up and talk about their issues. The social service agency, based on Chicago’s Northwest Side, provides counseling, violence reduction, foster and adoptive care and housing programs to more than 10,000 children and families within six counties.

Growing up, Long’s future didn’t look so promising. His parents were together for more than 10 years, but they were not married. Long was about 7 when his mother got addicted. It was in the mid- ’80s—around the time the crack epidemic was sweeping the nation.

“We tried to endure some of that and my mom would neglect us and things like that,” Long said. “As a result, my grandmother and my aunt kind of made a call to the [Illinois Department of Children and Family Services].”

Long’s grandmother could provide blood ties for the children so that they didn’t have to be split up, like she had seen happen in foster care. More importantly, his grandmother allowed his parents to visit and stay the night, though she probably wasn’t supposed to, Long added. There were two bedrooms in the home and 16 people living there.

“So my grandmother took us all in, and that was the one thing that, in retrospect … I appreciate more than anything,” Long said.

But the home lacked discipline and space, Long said. His grandmother in her 50s was unable to “mold” or discipline all of the children, he said. Long remained with his grandmother until he was 18 but his outlook on life was bleak. Several friends had tragic outcomes before they turned 21: killed, addicted to drugs or in prison. Long had little hope for his own future.

“So at 21, what helped me out is people believed. So you really can take yourself to a different format, a different level, if you are willing to do it but I never really believed that,” Long said.

A UCAN counselor, who served as the family’s DCFS caseworker, presented him with an opportunity. She said that UCAN had a program where if he agreed to enroll in college they’d pay for him to have an apartment and bus card.

“For me, I was like ‘Are you serious?’” Long said. “My mother didn’t have her own apartment. I have brothers that were like 25 and they were still staying at my grandmother’s apartment. So for me it was more like an opportunity.”

It was an opportunity that, until then, Long had never thought was possible for himself. Long said it was that conversation, more than anything else, that helped set him on the right path.

Now he’s committed to working with others and helping them find opportunities. Long says it’s his passion.

“Based on my experience, I just really like going in and speaking with people. I can do that and not get paid six figures,” Long said. “I don’t want to say necessarily a motivational speaker, but teaching people how to create opportunities.”

Long is critical of the cycle of counselors that foster children must go through. The counselor who opened his eyes to the UCAN program was one of about a dozen that worked with the family during the 10 years that Long and his siblings were in relative foster care.

“I think that when children have to experience their parents going through something like that, they necessarily don’t need all of them [counselors] up in their business,” he said. “But there is some attention that needs to be upon the children, on what they want to see.”

Long and his siblings didn’t think they needed any help coping with their parents’ struggles with drugs and incarceration. “We were like … ‘I don’t need no counseling,’ and we probably did,” said Long, who added that none of his siblings have ever received any formal counseling.

It wasn’t until after Long began working with UCAN that he began to realize that talking through his feelings was helpful. “I use more of the people around me as therapists—a lot of the staff, a lot of my uncles; my grandmother was the greatest therapist ever, to use her and a lot of people I talked to, it released the pain and tensions,” Long said.

In 1998, at age 18, Long moved into a studio apartment and promptly enrolled in computer science classes at a local college. He worked as an intern for UCAN, which set aside part of his wages in an interestbearing savings account that grew to $5,000 by the time Long turned 21.

Long has worked at UCAN for 10 years since coming to the organization as a client. He went on to get an internship there and became one of the first former clients to work for the organization.

After Long began working at UCAN, he enrolled in college but left school after three years. That was nearly a decade ago. Before Long’s grandmother died in 2003, he promised her that he’d finish college. In January, Long began classes at Chicago State University toward a degree in psychology. Long knows that he’s got more riding on his future than fulfilling a promise to his grandmother, but being a strong example for his family and a good parent for his son.

“I was looking at my son last night. … I’m looking at him—he was saying, ‘Dad!’” Long said. “I was the same way with my father. But there was something that happened that [my father] couldn’t maintain. … Now I know I got to really be aware of [that] and show I’m strong enough to get through.”

Through his job, Long has secured state and federal funding to produce two CDs chronicling the personal struggles of youth, including himself. He’s currently writing a song for another installment called “The Break” about his mother’s drug addiction.

Long believes people should use the tragedy of their life experiences to move them to do positive things. When he looks back on his own story, he can see areas in the justice system that should be improved. For one, Long believes that siblings have rights, such as a right to see their siblings if they become wards of the state, even though their parents’ rights have been terminated.

“Children never really have a voice to [decide] what’s best for them. It’s usually the adults in that situation [who say] what they think can be beneficial.”