Englewood Speaks

By: Shannon SheltonMario Perry, 20, Air Force recruit

Reporters often paint a grim picture of life in Englewood. Whenever the South Side community makes the news, the story always seems to be about poverty, crime and despair.

Twenty-year-old Mario Perry sees something different. The lifelong Chicagoan, who has lived in Englewood since he was in preschool, knows a community of working men and women taking care of their families, and young people trying to build a better future for themselves.

"Sometimes the media isn’t even out here," he said. "How they gonna say the community's bad when they’re not there?"

Perry lives in Englewood. Reporters do not. To Perry, it's that simple. Negative stereotypes of Englewood residents, particularly young black men, bother him. Perry said his male friends and relatives have jobs or are attending school, not selling drugs and committing crimes.

Like young men in other neighborhoods, they have common pastimes; they like to play football in a nearby park, drive to the mall to shop and hang out at the movie theater. But unlike many his age, who want to move as far as possible from their home towns, Perry sees himself building a future in Englewood and raising a family there.

Perry lives in a home on the 5700 block of South May Street. The house is filled with family pictures and awards the six Perry children won during their school years. Perry lives with his parents, Henry Sr. and Carolyn; older sister Trina, 30; younger sister Dione, 8; and Trina's son, Darius, 4. Mario's other siblings live in other Chicago neighborhoods.

Soon, he too will leave the family nest. Early this year, Perry plans to move to San Antonio, Tex., where he will begin a four-year stint in the U.S. Air Force. A military career, however, is not his goal. Perry said his true love is taking care of children, and he hopes to open a child care center with his mother and Trina after earning a child development degree from a Chicago-area college.

"I've thought about working with kids for as long as I can remember," Perry said. As a senior at Englewood Technical Preparatory Academy, he worked after school at a South Side daycare center and grew close to the children, all under age 5.

Perry said he didn't know of too many daycare centers in Englewood and is committed to opening one in his community. But this young man’s future wasn’t always so focused.

"I used to get in trouble and stuff in grammar school," Perry said. "Mostly every day mom came up to school. Mom was mad and my dad said they'd send me to boot camp." Despite those warnings, Perry continued to fool around at school, usually by not doing his work, until he failed sixth grade.

"Then I woke up," he said. "I had never failed before." He finally committed himself to doing well. He also found motivation in sports, playing tailback on Englewood High School's football team during his sophomore, junior and senior years. The team won a Chicago Public League Blue Division championship in 1998.

"It paid off," he said about playing football. "It kept me out of trouble, off the streets." Perry graduated in 1999 and enrolled in Richard J. Daley College, majoring in child development. But he wasn't used to the fast pace of his classes, and fell behind. That's when he decided to quit school temporarily and join the Air Force.

But Perry doesn't blame his school problems on his high school education, saying the teachers at Englewood constantly challenged him and his peers.

"They was pushing us to get out of there. They wanted us to graduate and be something," he said. But he does question why friends at other high schools seemed to have an easier time landing a job than he did.

And while he’s optimistic about his future and building a life in Englewood, he's not naive. He applauds the police department's efforts to curb drug dealing in his neighborhood, but he’s also frustrated when they stop and search him when he’s done nothing wrong. And he's skeptical of politicians who visit the area and promise economic developments and improvements.

"People have been hearing it for years," he said. "Ain't nothing happening."

Despite the negatives, Perry knows there are good people in Englewood. He knows it's a good place to live and raise a family. After all, it's his home.

"I grew up here. Ain't nothing wrong with this community," he said.


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Justin Storm, 24, actor and dancer

By John Cloutman

All work and no play may turn Jack into a dull boy, but not Justin Storm. The 24-year-old entertainer-entrepreneur-college student has little time for play in his quest for success.

After graduating from South Shore Academy High School in 1993, Storm enrolled at Columbia College and graduated from a two-year program with an associate's degree in acting and dance.

Performing is Storm’s passion, but he also has a backup plan just in case stardom eludes him. "I'm holding my own right now, but I am also taking computer training because there are no guarantees,"he said. "I might get a role today and that role might last a month. But next month or in two months I might not have anything so I can always go to work and keep me a job."

Storm is currently majoring in computer programming at DePaul University and will graduate in May. Being a college student and an entertainer takes a lot of time, but Storm needs a

steady income, so he also has become something of an entrepreneur. With his brother, Bernard, he runs the B&K Restaurant at 7301 S. Halsted St.

"We have soul food and fast food and that's where I am the majority of the time. If I'm not there I'm at school or I'm getting booked for shows," he said.

Storm takes extra pride in his accomplishments because he grew up as a ward of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. "I have never seen my birth mother," he said. "Most people my age are ashamed to talk about it but I'm not. Some people that come from DCFS, they don't make it. I'm still trying to make it and I think I'm doing good to be independent at 24 years old."

His foster mother, Juanita Robinson, adopted Storm when he was 3. He credits her for making him the person he is today. "In high school, my freshman year was the hardest. I was determined to finish and I did, but my mother kept her foot down on me--I had to go to school."

But Storm said he "got into some trouble,"and moved into Sullivan House, a foster care home for boys ages 12 to 18. There he met Sullivan's executive director, William Green, whom Storm refers to as his father because of his positive influence. "He kept me in school and taught me how to budget money. He said to never say that you can not do something-- you can do anything you want to do if you put your mind to it"

While Storm grew up in a healthy home, he still experienced the violence pervading Englewood. "In grammar school I lost a friend of mine named Cornelius, he recalled. "On a Thursday, we were sitting around talking about funerals and what we would like if we died. He said, 'If I die, I want you all to dance at my funeral'. When I came to school Friday they told us he got shot in an elevator. That really stuck with me."

As an adult, Storm said he has lost several friends to AIDS. "At first I had a phobia being around people with HIV, but I realized you have to have an open mind in society because it could happen to you," he said.

As busy as Storm is, he finds time to attend church and sing in the choir at McKinzie Mission, 2415 E 75th St., where his brother is a minister. "I put it like this: All that we do, we have to include God whether it's good or bad," he said. "I have learned a lot from my brother on how to lift up my spiritual side."

Church and family play an important role in Storm's neighborhood, on the 6600 block of South Normal Boulevard. "Our block is a family-owned block," he said one day last November, as he pointed out familiar buildings. "My brother and his mother own three buildings over here. There's a lot of positive stuff right on this block; this summer we had a gospel fest in the church next door.

"Right now we have peace, but Labor Day somebody got smoked in the alley across the street," Storm said. "The neighborhood is what you make of it. If you're out here selling drugs, of course it's going to be a bad neighborhood. If you're trying to do something positive, it will be positive."

In addition to his brother, Storm has two older sisters, Roxanne and Bridget. Three younger siblings, Marcia, T.C. and Martin, also were adopted by Robinson. He said he tries to set a good example for the younger members of his family. "I see the past as a positive challenge for the future. A lot of stuff that has happened to me in my life has made me stronger now.

"I hear a lot of people say, ‘If I had the sense back then that I have now, I could have really made it.' I just say to people, 'I've been there, don't do it.'"


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Annie Fernandez, 55, retired community volunteer

By Suzanne Smalley

A Sega Genesis Ms. Pac Man game sits on the kitchen table, its fluorescent pink screen lighting up the tiny Englewood basement apartment where 55-year-old Annie Fernandez makes her home. In a faux antique bowl sprayed with gold that sits on top of the kitchen table, Reese's peanut butter cups are mixed together with Luden's cough drops and Hershey's Hugs and Kisses candies.

Fernandez is a character. When asked if 8 a.m. would be too early for an interview she laughed heartily. "Girl, what grade in school are you in? I get up at 6." She is an uncommonly happy woman with a sweet face and is someone you just want to hug. Her boyfriend Dock gave her the Sega game because she loves Ms. Pac Man but "now he wants to throw it out because all I do when he comes over is play it," she said.

But Fernandez also is a serious woman who has achieved great success in her life. She raised her son, Tony, alone. She managed a building in the Robert Taylor Homes public housing development. She works at a homeless shelter. She volunteered at her church almost every day until she had a stroke two months ago.

After living on the North Side from 1981 to 1997, Fernandez moved back to Englewood three years ago. "People ask, 'when are you gonna come back to the 'hood?' I came back and I saw a lot of deterioration. Businesses that had been thriving were a mess. The 63rd Street shopping area where there had been exclusive shops were all Dollar stores. I said, 'How did they let this happen?'

Fernandez is used to tackling problems and helping people. In the early 1970s she took a job as a live-in building manager at the Robert Taylor Homes. Those were rough years, she recalled, though nowhere near as bad as it is now. She said she always left her door unlocked so people could come in even if she wasn't home.

"There was a shootout between two of the buildings," she recalled. "Afterward some of the guys came to my apartment to hide out. They knew my door was unlocked. I convinced them to lay down their guns. They were all crying and the police came and took the guns."

She also had contact with some of Chicago's biggest power players. She speaks with affection about the late Mayor Richard J. Daley. "I called Mayor Daley and he said, 'Annie, anything you need, let me know.'"

At the Taylor Homes, Fernandez started a jobs program and launched a voter registration drive after realizing that residents weren't voting because many were intimidated by the polling machine. "We got 100 percent voting in our building out of 12 stories with 12 units on each floor," she said. "Everyone registered and everyone voted. I cooked a big meal afterward."

Fernandez said she left the Taylor Homes in the late 1970s and moved to Englewood. For a time she worked as a private nurse but grew tired of it. In her typically fearless fashion, Fernandez set out to get a job. "I went to City Hall because I figured they're really fired up down there. They hired me on the spot."

She has done everything from coordinate volunteers for mayoral campaigns to serve as a supervisor in the city's Summer Youth Program. She especially loved Mayor Harold Washington, whom she considered a friend. "Being in that administration for two years, I knew everything that was going down," she confided.

Fernandez lived on the Near North Side neighborhood during the years she worked for the city. But she's happy to be back in Englewood. "People watch out for each other here and the crime is not as bad as everyone thinks," she said. "The only problem with Englewood is you can't get a cab. Forget it if you're standing on the corner."