Olympic Track Star Helps Youngsters Put Their Best Foot Forward

In 1981, when the track star Jackie Joyner-Kersee returned from Los Angeles to her hometown, East St. Louis,

for her mother’s funeral, she looked to escape her sorrow by visiting the recreation center where she had spent many hours reading and playing sports while growing up. When Ms. Joyner-Kersee arrived, she found the doors padlocked shut. “It was devastating for me,” she says. “I started wondering, where do the kids in the neighborhood go?”

Since last year, kids in a downtrodden neighborhood of East St. Louis have not had to wonder about where to go. Many visit the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Center, which offers tutoring, computer and dance classes, athletics, and other programs. It also provides hot meals, health education, and a safe place to play for the hundreds of kids ages 7 to 18 who pass through the center each year.

What’s more, it often offers youngsters a chance to work with Ms. Joyner-Kersee, who moved back to St. Louis eight years ago. During her frequent visits to the center, Ms. Joyner-Kersee, 39, says that she often encourages the youngsters to follow her own example, and that “when you go away and be successful I hope that you always remember home.” She adds: “You want to come back and help someone else. Even if you come for a week or a day, that’s good, just never forget home.”

The recreation center is now the centerpiece of Ms. Joyner-Kersee’s foundation, which she started in 1988 to provide college scholarships. It currently has more than $10-million in assets.

With the help of the foundation’s board and her husband, Robert Kersee, the foundation’s president, she raised $12-million — half of which paid for the building, and the other half, for its endowment. The money mainly came from corporations, including one from Anheuser-Busch Companies, which has its headquarters in St. Louis, and from foundations, including a $2-million grant from the Danforth Foundation, also in St. Louis. Individuals contributed a total of $250,000 when they bought commemorative bricks, which now line the walkway to the building. And Ms. Joyner-Kersee, who has won three Olympic gold medals, says she has donated a sum in the “mid six-figures” to the project, money she has earned partly through corporate sponsorships and speaking engagements. She declined to be more specific about how much she gives.

Managing Money

For now, most of the center’s programs are organized by the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. But Ms. Joyner-Kersee hopes to develop some of her own activities in the future, including one where elderly people and children read together.

In addition to the intergenerational programs, Ms. Joyner-Kersee wants children and their parents to learn about managing and saving money. At the center’s holiday party last year, Ms. Joyner-Kersee passed out savings bonds worth $25 each, as well as toys and food. The bonds had a letter attached detailing how to use them to open a bank account. Recipients who set up an account were promised additional money from the foundation the following year. Of the 350 bonds distributed, only five were used to set up accounts, says Ms. Joyner-Kersee. But that has only increased her determination, and Ms. Joyner-Kersee plans to set up financial-information seminars at the center this year. “This is a good time to tap into the kids’ minds about saving money,” she says. “And maybe the parents that come in and volunteer, we’ll teach them as well.”

In addition to money management, Ms. Joyner-Kersee also stresses the importance of personal appearance to the students, many of whom come to the recreation center six days a week. Hats come off in the building, and the foundation purchased suits and dresses for students who were traveling to a conference and didn’t own appropriate clothes.

When Ms. Joyner-Kersee drops by the center, she often asks one of the teenagers for a tour of the building, to see how they interact with her, as well as to test their grammar skills and be sure they are not mumbling or talking too softly.

“I want to see how they present themselves,” says Ms. Joyner-Kersee. “I want them to not only be learning just to have fun, but learning to be leaders.”