The Pride of Cairo, Illinois

On the evening of June 15th, I will be glued in front of somebody’s TV set watching the Tony Awards ceremony live from New York. I can’t remember the last time I watched the Tony Awards. That’s because I’ve NEVER watched the Tony Awards before. It’s not that I don’t like Broadway dramas and musicals…I ADORE them, and have often wished I could spend a month in the Big Apple just seeing plays and eating pastrami sandwiches from Katz’s Deli on the Lower East Side. (I swear, you will see the face of God upon your first bite of the pastrami at Katz’s.)

Anyway, I will be watching the Tony’s this year because an actor named
Christopher Jackson will be performing in one of the musical numbers from the play,
“In The Heights.” http://www.intheheightsthemusical.com/index.html It was nominated for 13 Tony awards this year, and Chris is one of the featured performers. I can call him Chris, because I’ve known him ever since he came bouncing into the office at Cairo High School about 27 years ago.

At the time, the only thing I expected from Chris Jackson was that one day he would one day learn his ABC’s and 1,2,3’s and grow up to be a good strong man. After all, back then he was just an adorable little 5 year old boy with curly golden hair wearing a little white sailor suit. With his dimples and the devilish little grin, he was just too cute for words. Chris’s parents had just moved to Cairo, and his mother Jane would be teaching Home Economics at the High School. The whole Jackson family….Ron, Jane, Chris and his older sister April, all came to the school one day while I was in the office with my sister Julie, and I never forgot the impish, fearless little boy running around getting into everything he could get his chubby little hands on.

If you’d told me at the time that Chris would grow up to be tall and handsome, I wouldn’t have been surprised. If you’d told me he would not only learn his ABC’s and 1,2,3’s, but that he would be incredibly smart, funny and charming, I’d have been unfazed. If you’d told me that he would be extremely successful at whatever he chose to do in life….hey, no shocker there, either.

But at the time I just don’t know if I could have grasped it if you’d told me that 27 years later, I would be standing on the stage of the Richard Rodgers Theater on West 46th Street in New York City, after a Friday night performance of a Broadway musical that had just been nominated for 13 Tony Awards……and that one of the featured actors in that play would be none other than little Chris Jackson. Or I should say Mr. Christopher Jackson, seasoned Broadway veteran with an amazing voice, incredible talent, and a list of creative projects a mile long. (The first time I saw Chris on Broadway, he was in the starring role of the adult Simba in the premier of a little musical you may have heard of…..”The Lion King.”)

It’s not so much that I wouldn’t have believed HE could do it….it’s just that when I was standing on that stage a few weeks ago, I felt like I was in a dream. Only moments earlier, I had been mesmerized watching Chris singing and dancing before the footlights on this stage, and basking in the thunderous applause at the end. And now I was standing on that same stage. AND I had just met the actress America Fererra, who was taking a break from her “Ugly Betty” shooting schedule to see the play. (She is so tiny and cute, and just as sweet as her character!) I also got to meet the play’s director, Thomas Kail, and the author and lead performer, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Astonishingly, I was only briefly devastated by the fact that I own bras that are older than the director and most of the performers in a major Broadway production.

Anyhoo, you have to understand from whence Chris and I came to fully realize the enormity of this event. A few blogposts back, I shared my feelings about my tragic little hometown, Cairo, Illinois, where most young peoples’ dreams are crushed before they have a chance to blossom. I got out because I had a mother who insisted that I get an education and older siblings who had already left and made successful lives for themselves. Chris got out because he had a mother who loves him dearly and supported him fully. Oh, and because he’s got MAD skills as a singer, dancer, actor, lyricist…and he believed in himself.

It absolutely breaks my heart that so many of the children and teens of Cairo, Illinois don’t have any of those things. Many of them have never seen a parent get up and go to work every morning. Too many of them are exposed to drugs, violence, and criminal neglect every single day of their lives. And to top it all off, they live in a crumbling, hopeless, negative environment that offers not a single glimpse of the possibility of a better life.

That’s why I wish I could open up the gym at Cairo High School on the evening of June 15th, rent a huge flat screen TV and gather all the children and youth of Cairo there to watch Mr. Christopher Jackson perform during the Tony Awards. If just one of them sees this “kid” from Cairo, Illinois performing for an audience of millions, maybe it would unlock a door in their minds. Maybe it would make them believe in themselves….as much as I believe in the incredible talent of that little boy who came bouncing into Cairo High School 27 years ago, and who became a man who is truly “The Pride of Cairo, Illinois.”