“There is gold in all of us.” It’s the first thing one sees when visiting the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation website. The motto is fitting, as its founder is known as one of the most gracious, impressive and positive people.
Considered one of the “50 Great Athletes of All Time” by ESPN, and named by Sports Illustrated the "Greatest Female Athlete of the 20th Century," Jackie Joyner-Kersee is a legend in St. Louis and the world over. But thousands of children who grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois, will remember her for many years to come for so much more.
Twenty-five years ago, the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Center and Academy were born out of the foundation Jackie started in 1988. The 6,200-square-foot multi-purpose center sits on nearly 50 acres in the middle of East St. Louis, where Jackie was born and where her desire to find her own gold began.
A humble and seemingly fearless woman, Jackie’s athletic credentials are unquestionably among the best ever, in all of sports. A six-time Olympic medalist, including three gold, one silver and two bronze, Jackie dominated the Olympic heptathlon and long jump events throughout her career, which spanned four Olympic Games: 1984, 1988, 1992, and 1996. She is the first woman to win back-to-back gold medals in the heptathlon, the first American woman to win an Olympic Gold Medal in the long jump, and the first woman to score more than 7,000 points in the heptathlon. And astonishingly, despite the advancements in technology and training used by athletes around the world over the decades since, she still holds the World Heptathlon Record at 7,291 points, which she set at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, Korea.
But Jackie hasn’t just broken records. She has been building futures for decades. The JJK Foundation has been empowering young people for a quarter century. In the beginning, she “didn’t need a building to help people.” She simply used her own sponsorships from her athletic achievements. “You want to help people, you just help,” she says.
She says she wants to do for others what her first coach, Nino Fennoy, did for her. “He saw the potential in me, I did not know I had,” she says. “I just had fun running, jumping and playing basketball. We ran on dirt in the park. But we were young. We didn’t know any better.”
She says her parents, Alfred Joyner and Mary Ruth Joyner, and her great grandmother, Ollie Mae Johnson, all played a part in her ability believe dreams were possible. “We lived with my great grandmother and lived off of her Social Security check. But my parents focused on what we could control, not putting limits or barriers on us. And I focused on, ‘I can do it.’ When you are younger, you have imagination. For me, seeing the 1976 Olympics Games on television helped me make that connection of seeing that what we were doing running on the dirt meant something, that I could one day represent my country and compete amongst the world’s best.”
After the Olympics, Jackie didn’t put her awards on a shelf and fade into the record books. Instead, she chose to return home in 1988 and live out a greater purpose. She established the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation that same year. And from it came Jackie Joyner-Kersee’s (JJK) Winning in Life program series in 1996; the Jackie Joyner-Kersee (JJK) Center in 2000; the Jackie Joyner-Kersee (JJK) Academy in 2021; and in 2022, Jackie Joyner-Kersee Food, Agriculture and Nutrition Innovation Center (JJK FAN).
A unique public-private partnership between the JJK Foundation, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and University of Illinois Extension, The JJK FAN Center’s mission is to provide quality youth and community programs in STEAM+Ag, the integration of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) with agriculture (Ag), food production, nutrition and physical activity, in East St. Louis and beyond.
The program is designed to eventually offer indoor and outdoor urban agriculture demonstration sites, as well as space for youth and community members to engage in hands-on training and certification programs related to growing food, ag innovation, and nutrition for improving health and performance, all in line with Jackie’s dream to provide youth in East St. Louis the opportunity to “win in life” and transform a community that inspires the world.
“And this community is like any other community,” Jackie says. “It is filled with very articulate, loving, thriving people who really want to make a difference.”
The JJK Academy uses the BJU Press curriculum, which incorporates a variety of hands-on and multisensory learning approaches focusing on academic rigor, visuals, critical-thinking exercises, manipulatives and activities that take students beyond just reading a textbook.
According to the Foundation, “Being born in a city that is severely under-resourced and shrouded in stereotypes, does not have to limit the course of a child’s future. Their first step to greatness starts here.”
Jackie says the JJK Winning in Life program series is based on her fundamental belief that there is gold in all of us. She says the question then becomes: “How do we create a proven solution, for youth that face the severest of economic and societal hurdles, that will develop the mindset and instill the confidence, dedication and self-respect to achieve the greatness that lives within them?”
The program focuses participants on setting and achieving a series of goals through calculated risk-taking, challenging their determination and grit and expanding their critical thinking skills. “The essence of the program teaches the students that, in spite of life’s challenges, winning happens for those that strive for the highest standards and stay true to the highest values,” Jackie says. “It takes a lot of courage and faith to face the most severe obstacles and believe in yourself enough to know you will overcome them.”
According to the JJK Foundation representatives, the programs have “grown to become a safe haven and learning-rich environment for area youth, where the challenges and limitations of one of America’s most notoriously deadly and impoverished cities will never define where a child can go, or who they can become.”
Jackie says next she hopes to create an endowment to continue the legacy of the Foundation long after she is gone.
In the end, Jackie says its all about faith. “It’s my faith and my belief in God. I pray a lot. Every step of the way was filled with life lessons that have tested my character, my strength, my motivation, my desire. But through it all, I learned something. I don’t let fear get the best of me.”
Today, Jackie mentors athletes, as her husband of nearly 40 years and former coach, Bob Kersee, coaches them. She says its actually tougher for her to watch others compete. “When I was in it, I gave my all, but the anxiety is greater in the stands than it ever was being out their competing.”
Humble to a fault, Jackie was reluctant to answer, when prodded to answer the question: “Are you still fast?” Eventually, she nods though, “I’m still pretty fast.”
For more information or to donate or get involved with the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation, visit JJKFoundation.org or call 618.274.5437.