This is a story of love and belief and wonder and enthusiasm and joy and what can happen when you invest them all in a kid.
Erica Heilmann ran a nationally renowned youth theater program in the southern suburbs of Chicago. I can call it nationally renowned because no less than the Tonys honored her in 2017 with the excellence in theatre education award. She taught theater at Thornton Fractional South High School, in addition to helping found the Broadway Junior Program at the Oak Lawn Park District, where she also acted, produced and directed.
Reagan Pender was an energetic kid who didn’t mind the spotlight. Maybe even craved it a little.
“My dad was the oldest of 15 and my mom was the seventh of nine kids,” Pender, now 28, told me. “I always wanted attention, and theater seemed like a pretty good place to get it.”
His mom brought him to the Oak Lawn Park District when he was 7, and Heilmann cast him in “Wizard of Oz.”
“What I remember is that from Reagan’s first show, through every single one after, you knew he was on that stage,” Dave Heilmann told me. “There could be 100 kids, but your eyes would go to Reagan. Once he got you he wouldn’t let go.”
Dave Heilmann was married to Erica. I met him in 2017 when I wrote about Erica being honored by the Tony Awards. She was living with thymoma, a disease that forms cancer cells on the outside surface of the thymus gland.
She died in 2018.
“Erica adored this little kid,” Dave Heilmann said.
He adored her back, coming to visit her at rehearsals long after he aged out of her program. They were kindred spirits who found each other through art.
In March, Pender will open a show on Broadway-the first of Heilmann’s Broadway Junior kids to make it to that other Broadway. He’s in “The Who’s Tommy,” a rock opera based on music from The Who. Pete Townsend is rumored to be showing up on opening night.
“Erica is the reason,” Pender told me. “She always gave young people a safe space to figure out who they are, especially as an artist. She gave me a second home.”
She would say the same of the kids.
Erica would travel from Oak Lawn to Indianapolis every week to see a thymoma specialist and receive chemotherapy. She would FaceTime her students from the hospital for costume checks. She once scheduled a surgery around “Annie.”
“The doctor probably thought I was completely insane,” she told me at the time. “I said, ‘Well, I’m directing ‘Annie,’ and I want to be there for the kids, and I don’t want them to be worried about me. Can we just schedule it a week later? I mean, the cancer’s not going anywhere.’ “
The doctor acquiesced.
“She was such a warrior,” Pender said.
Dave Heilmann remembers Pender at Erica’s wake.
“I was standing there going through a pain that I never knew existed,” Heilmann said. “You’re not looking to see who is next in line. Just one at a time for hours. Reagan stepped up and with one look at his eyes I saw how much he too had lost-his director, his friend, his buddy Erica, was gone.”
In January 2023, Pender lost his mom, Liz, who had become a dear friend of the Heilmanns.
“Being in this Broadway show, it’s just difficult because the first two people I wanted to tell when I got the call were my mom and Erica,” Pender said. “You like to think they’ll be here with me. They’ll have the best seats in the house. They’ll be laughing.”
Pender is in the “Tommy” ensemble, and he understudies the role of Uncle Ernie.
“I am dedicating the show to my mother and to Erica, of course,” Pender said. “And if I can, I always want to shout out my dad. His name is Jim and he still lives in Oak Lawn. And I have three brothers: Hank, Shea and Casey.”
Dave and Erica Heilmann had four kids. Erica was diagnosed with thymoma when their youngest daughter was 10 days old. All four still do theater, and their oldest, who will graduate from college this spring, helps her dad direct now at Broadway Junior.
“So much goes through your heart and mind,” Dave Heilmann said. “Excitement, pride, Reagan’s dream, Liz, Erica, all the hours teaching children. Millions dream of it, but very few actually make it to that stage.
“At the same time,” he continued, “I think about Erica’s face, about what she would say, how her eyes would light up with pride. Your heart is breaking at the same time it’s being filled.”
She taught kids how and why to dream. And now one of them is living his. Countless kids she taught, no doubt, are living theirs-whatever those dreams look like.
She did that. And they loved her. And the world is better for it.
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This story was originally published February 17, 2024, 7:26 AM.
source: star-telegram
