Father's footsteps

By: Casey SanchezThis is a story about "Belushi" and "Little Belushi"-Manuel Feliciano and his son Jovanny.

This story takes place inside the Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, just like the film "The Blues Brothers." But unlike the film, this story runs longer on tragedy than comedy. It is about the power of living up to a family name and the bonds that push fathers and sons in and out of prison.

The story begins in the early 1980s with "Belushi," the street name Manuel Feliciano had picked up as a gang chief for the Spanish Cobras in Humboldt Park. The nickname stuck as much for Manuel Feliciano's physical similarity to actor John Belushi as it did for his Joliet- Jake-style gangster cool. For his son, it would be a hard act to follow.

"I acted like him in every way when I was young. I wanted to prove to everyone that I am 'Little Belushi,'" said Jovanny Feliciano, 20, currently serving a five-year sentence for possession of a stolen car.

In his considerable spare time inside Stateville, Jovanny Feliciano said he reads books and articles that talk "about how kids get incarcerated because their fathers are incarcerated. … I highly believe it's true."

When Jovanny Feliciano turned 7, members of his dad's gang started taking him to Stateville to visit. The young boy saw a glamorous world behind the gates.

"There was women coming to see my father. He had money, gold, gym shoes from the street, clothes from the street, chains, and a bunch of guys he would talk to that were like his friends," said Jovanny Feliciano. "I didn't think people on the outside would really forget about you."

From birth to age 12, every sight Jovanny Feliciano had of his dad was mediated by prison visiting centers. At the time, the son did not grasp that his father was serving 12 years for a murder conviction. Manuel Feliciano maintains that he was framed for the killing by a fellow gang member.

"My view of him was he was like Superman. He's my father, this big tough guy who don't take nothing from nobody," said Jovanny Feliciano. "I never looked at this like he was a bad person, a violent person, none of that."

Somewhere between the Stateville visits, the rotating sets of nearly 10 foster parents and 20 elementary schools that made up his domestic life, Jovanny Feliciano came to believe that his calling lie in carving out a name for "Little Belushi" on the streets; a reputation every bit as steel-booted as his dad's had been.

Meanwhile, after serving more than a decade in prison, Manuel Feliciano was convinced that the Belushi name could stand for being a strong father just as it once stood for being a notorious gang strongman.

Upon his release, Manuel Feliciano found steady work in the valet business and worked his way up to management.

He remarried a younger woman, herself a reformed gang member. They had two daughters and left Humboldt Park for a quiet, manufactured home in northwest suburban Des Plaines. But Manuel Feliciano soon found that his son was all too eager to retrace the violent path of his footsteps. As "Little Belushi," it seemed pre-ordained that Jovanny would be jumped into the Cobras.

"[The Cobras] told me he's going to join a gang. If not us, then somebody else and you won't have any say over anything," said Manuel Feliciano.

So the father got tough. He set an 8 p.m. curfew only to watch his boy drag himself home around midnight or sometimes not at all. Manuel Feliciano kicked his son out of the house only to watch Jovanny enjoy his life on the streets.

"Having been brainwashed by the streets already, I felt like, you know, who is this guy who's just been gone outta my whole life? Who is he trying to tell me what I should and shouldn't be doing?" said Jovanny Feliciano. "At the same time, he was my father, and I should try and respect him."

The son struggled. He had grown up hearing stories of Belushi, the famed gangster, and wanted very little of the rules laid down by Manuel Feliciano, the father.

When Jovanny Feliciano's name came up in a search for a murder suspect, his tough-love father hauled him into the police station. Jovanny was eventually cleared. "I had to do it," said Manuel Feliciano."I was so scared they'd come to my door, saying he was dead."

But the father could not halt his son's gang lifestyle. In 2004, Jovanny Feliciano went AWOL from a work release center and was later arrested for possession of a stolen vehicle. This time he went to prison-to Stateville, as his father had done nearly 20 years earlier.

Inside, his father's shadow follows him among inmates who served time with Manuel Feliciano. "They say, 'you remind me of your father,'" says Jovanny Feliciano. Some of his father's prison fights are still lore among lifers who knew his dad in the '90s. Jovanny wants none of it. "I let them know, he's a different person now."

"It's the way the world rotates," says Jovanny Feliciano, whose view of the world outside is changing much like it did for his father during his years in Stateville. "As far as being here, far from drugs, it's the best thing that could've happened to me."

"When you on the corner, you feel like you're invincible. You feel like you're unstoppable 'til you end up here," he said.

To Jovanny Feliciano, living up to the Belushi name is beginning to signify more than cutting a mean figure on the streets. "I realize now that it's ignorant, stupid," he says. "OK. I'm a bad-ass gangbanger. But if I have kids out there and I'm a bad-ass gang member that means I'm not being a good-ass father."

About once a month, his family visits. Manuel said he has asked the state for permission to visit his son but has received

no response. So Jovanny's dad waits in the car as stepmom Evita Feliciano brings his younger sisters to visit.

Evita explains to her 6-year-old daughter why Jovanny can't come home for a long time. "I just tell her Jovanny's been a bad boy. He needs to stay there 'til he becomes a good boy," said Evita."She constantly asks me, 'Is he good yet?'"

In many ways, Evita is a go-between for Manuel and Jovanny. The father and son exchange letters often but Manuel remains unconvinced that his son has changed."When you're in prison you can always write and say you're sorry because it's an enclosed space," says Manuel.

Jovanny hopes that the prison visits will remain, "a vague memory" for his little sisters. In the meantime, he'd really like to answer the 6-year-old's question- and to convince his father that things will be different.

"If I was to go home and do right, I'd be following exactly in the footsteps of my dad," said Jovanny, who's projected parole date is Sept. 8, 2008."That would be the most positive footsteps I've followed so far."