Evil Vince Photography

Joseph and Rocky Cytrynbaum

Dr. Joseph Cytrynbaum, 1972-2009;
helped guide lives of urban youth in Chicago,
taught at Northeastern Illinois University
Remained active in Umoja at Manley after joining university’s staff

By Trevor Jensen
Tribune reporter
July 15, 2009

Joseph Cytrynbaum helped shape futures for inner-city
high school students through a program that provides
lessons in creative expression, self-management and leadership.

It was tough work and the pay wasn’t great for a guy with
an Ivy League doctorate, but he thrived in the job for four years
and stayed on as a volunteer after landing a teaching position
at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.

The children he worked with “weren’t his project or his job,
they were his joy,” said Lila Leff, founder of the
Umoja (Swahili for “Unity”) Student Development Corp.
“Kids wanted to live up to Joe’s version of them.”

Dr. Cytrynbaum, 37, died Saturday, July 11,
in Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center,
two days after suffering a cerebral aneurysm,
said his sister Pamela Cytrynbaum, a former Tribune reporter.

Raised in Evanston, Dr. Cytrynbaum returned to Chicago
after receiving a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania,
where for his dissertation he immersed himself in the life
of an inner-city Philadelphia high school, his sister said.

With Umoja, he worked out of Manley Career Academy High School
in Chicago’s Lawndale neighborhood. He designed and executed
programs designed not just to help students graduate and get to college,
but to get them to understand their responsibility to their West Side,
African-American and global communities, Leff said.

“Obscenely optimistic” but also realistic,
“he didn’t view people as problems,” Leff said.

“He was all about relationships,
and that relationships drive every level
of success in the work we’re doing,” she said.

Dr. Cytrynbaum coached the “Louder Than a Bomb” poetry team
through the Young Chicago Authors program,
coaxing students to write freely about their lives.

A burly marathon runner and vegan
(except for Carmen’s Pizza in Evanston, his sister said),
Mr. Cytrynbaum had a wicked sense of humor
and talked openly about whatever was on his mind.

“He was a big adolescent,” Leff said.
“We could spend as much time talking about
burping as we could about Nietzsche.”

The son of Northwestern University professor Solomon Cytrynbaum,
Dr. Cytrynbaum was active in theater at Evanston Township High School,
where he stole the show as the Lion in a production of “The Wiz.”

“He was Joe Cy, just because of his charisma,
he took up the whole stage,” said his friend Chris May.

“He supported everyone on their own path, even if
he didn’t agree with you he’d support you all the way,” May said.
“Joe Cy could have done anything he wanted.”

His involvement with the lives of students went beyond
his work at Umoja. May accompanied him to school sporting events,
marveling at his friend’s enthusiasm.

“He’d be showing up to a kid’s wrestling match
when even their parents weren’t,” May said.

Dr. Cytrynbaum took a tenure track position teaching
social work at Northeastern Illinois University in 2008,
the same year he and his wife welcomed a son whose
name reflects their time in Philadelphia: Rocky.

“They loved a good comeback story,” his sister said.

Besides his sister, Dr. Cytrynbaum is survived by his wife, Erin Flynn;
his son, Rocky; his mother, Bryna Cytrynbaum;
his father and stepmother, Solomon Cytrynbaum
and Susan Lee; and another sister, Glenna.