The tenacity to achieve
BY DAVE NEWBART Staff Reporter/dnewbart@suntimes.comAt 17, the future head of the largest community college system in the state became a homeless dropout.
For Cheryl Hyman -- now the recently appointed chancellor of City Colleges of Chicago -- it was a matter of simple survival: Her mother was addicted to drugs. Her stepfather struggled with alcoholism. Her birth father had moved out years earlier and struggled with his own addiction problems.
City Colleges of Chicago Chancellor Cheryl Hyman (third from left) stands in front of the town home of her grandmother, Willye Mae Payne (right), near 101st and Cottage Grove. With them are Hyman?s parents, Robert Hyman and Katherine McMurtry.
(Keith Hale/Sun-Times)
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Hyman's family no longer lived in the Henry Horner Homes, a Near West Side public-housing complex whose bleak conditions were exposed in the book There Are No Children Here, by journalist Alex Kotlowitz. But things became far worse when her family moved to Humboldt Park and lost the strong support network they had at Horner.
She stayed away from home as much as she could, even doing homework in a car under a streetlight. But she couldn't stay.
"I was not going to survive being there,'' she says now. Taking drugs "was not something you want to watch your parents do. I was angry and confused. I packed up a bag and decided I was never coming back.''
And even though she made it to senior year at Orr High School, was a cheerleader and generally earned B's and C's, she dropped out.
"I was not going to school until I got a stable environment where I could concentrate,'' she said.
But that would take some time. She started sleeping at friends' homes but was embarrassed by her situation.
"There was this shamefulness,'' she said.
She got a full-time job at a Kentucky Fried Chicken and rented a studio apartment -- but "quickly realized a fast-food career was not a bright one.'' She quit.
She moved in with friends whose mother was known to the kids in the neighborhood as "Mama Jackie'' because she never turned anyone away who was looking for a meal.
Jackie Stephens, now 60, had five children of her own, but she gave Hyman her own room and bed -- and a ear to listen.
"I just opened my arms and my doors,'' Stephens said. "She needed stability, and I tried my best to give it to her.''
The next year, Hyman decided to finish her high school work at an alternative school, but only after the principal at Orr agreed to let her participate in the normal graduation ceremonies. She was 19.
Throughout this, her grandmother on her mother's side, Willye Mae Payne, didn't know of Hyman's woes. When she found out, "I was shocked,'' says Payne, now 83. Hyman moved in with Payne, who was then a nurse at Cook County Hospital. The two even slept in the same bed at Payne's town home near 101st and Cottage Grove.
"I needed the comfort,'' Hyman said. "It felt safe. It was starting to feel real again.''
Although she never had a computer at home -- and didn't have much access to them in school -- Hyman decided she wanted to study computer science. "I always had a passion for technology,'' she said. She enrolled in a now-defunct vocational school that claimed to teach computer programming in six months, but left when she realized "they were teaching secretarial skills.'' So she set out to find the best place for computer training, and learned it was the Illinois Institute of Technology.
She met with an IIT counselor, who advised her to go to a community college, get good grades and transfer in.
The closest community college to her grandma's home? Olive-Harvey, one of City Colleges' seven schools that she will now oversee as chancellor. Although skeptical at first, she was soon impressed with the faculty, including a professor who helped her grasp calculus and other difficult math concepts.
"The staff was very committed. There was pride. There was this sense of hope and inspiration,'' she said. She got nearly all A's -- and later transferred to IIT, where she helped do research on a cutting-edge computer programming language called C++ and was even acknowledged in a professor's book.
"The community college really did give me my start,'' she said.
She moved to her own apartment -- and then someone from her past came knocking at her door.
"I told her I needed help,'' her mother, Katherine McMurtry, now 60, says. "I decided enough was enough. She took me in and got me back on my feet. It was a struggle.''
Hyman said she had matured and was willing to forgive by then.
"I no longer wanted to focus on what I had lost but what I had left,'' she said.
Her mother got clean -- and Hyman got her bachelor's degree in computer science on Dec. 15, 1996: the first member of her family to get a four-year college degree.
"You're talking about a celebration that went on for five days,'' says Lorraine Norsworthy, a mentor from the Henry Horner Homes who later had given Hyman her first tech job: running a computer lab at a Boys & Girls Club.
For Hyman, life was good.
"My eighth-grade graduation, daddy missed. For high school, mommy missed. But for college, both of them were there.''
The day after she graduated, she started as an analyst at ComEd and quickly rose through the ranks. As head lobbyist, she instituted a computerized system to track issues that "brought us from the 20th century to far deep into the 21st century,'' said ComEd Executive Vice President John Hooker. In 2008, Hyman co-chaired a team that evaluated the company internally and found $120 million in savings, a "monumental'' effort, Hooker said.
"She's always been a driver of change,'' he said.
All along she has done extensive volunteer work with students at risk by sharing what she overcame.
Hyman set up a mentoring program with ComEd and the Boys & Girls Club where she had worked with Norsworthy. ComEd also gave money for students to buy their own laptops and expanded a computer lab at the club. "When somebody helps Cheryl, she is going to give back immediately,'' Norsworthy said.
At the request of U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, she started a youth summer employment program for 1,000 low-income youth.
Hyman raised money to stop the closure of the Black Star Project, a Chicago group dedicated to eliminating the racial academic achievement gap.
Hyman was invited to apply for the chancellor job. She met with Mayor Daley, who is known to prefer skilled managers for top city positions: Last year he appointed Ron Huberman, a former police officer with no background in education, to run the Chicago Public Schools.
Although Hyman doesn't have a Ph.D. or teaching experience, Daley recommended her for the job earlier this month. The City Colleges board made an exception to the posted job requirements and appointed her -- a move City Colleges lawyers said is allowed under district policies. Six of the 18 candidates for the job did not have doctoral degrees.
"The concept that only educators can educate -- I don't subscribe to that,'' Hyman said. "It's up to us to teach each other. My successful track record as a proven manager in the private sector speaks for itself.''
At 40, she will be the second-youngest chancellor in City Colleges history.
Norsworthy, 53, says the community should get an assist in Hyman's rise.
"For her to become chancellor, it not only put her on the map, it put us there,'' she said.
Earlier this month, Hyman sat on a couch in her grandma's modest town home, which is packed with family photos, stuffed animals and odds and ends. Sitting next to her were her parents -- long divorced but both now working for the same airline caterer.
Hyman holds her grandma's hand. They show off childhood pictures of Hyman playing in the grass outside Henry Horner, and inside their housing unit, next to her "favorite curtains'' featuring pictures of dogs. There are also graduation photos and a shot of her standing next to then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama while she worked for ComEd.
Putting a finger on how Hyman was able to overcome so many hurdles to become chancellor of City Colleges isn't easy even for them.
She "didn't like the zoo, didn't like the circus,'' her mother recalls. But she liked "exploring'' and was very independent.
And despite the stereotypes of life in public housing, Hyman and her family said she was surrounded by an extremely tight-knit community and had a sheltered upbringing because she had extended family and friends looking out for her.
"She was protected by people who knew her,'' her father says. "She was able to experience many things and not get physically harmed.''
Norsworthy said overcoming her parents' woes gave Hyman the ability to cope with just about anything.
"She won't sink,'' said Norsworthy. No matter what happens, "she's going to find another boat that don't have a hole in it.''
Hyman describes herself as "tenacious'' and "driven.'' She remembers, at age 12, firing off an angry letter to then-President Ronald Reagan to protest the firing of 11,000 striking air traffic controllers.
"Strength has always been her middle name,'' longtime friend Debra Carson said.
Hyman said she thinks taking the job as chancellor was her "destiny.''
"I wasn't blessed to make it through all the things I made it through and not help other people,'' she said.
Congrats and good luck
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