Roy Exum
About a week ago there appeared a wonderful story in the Nashville Tennessean and if I don’t share it, you ain’t gonna know whatever became of Darrell S. Freeman, a black kid who once attended the now defunct Kirkman Technical High School where he learned how to repair TVs and radios. He later flunked out of Chattanooga State with a 1.234 grade point average and the weather forecast in his world was dark and cloudy.
Yet in the years that rolled by faster and faster, he got a Bachelor’s degree and a masters degree, started a company using the Yellow Pages as his only guide for “cold calls,” and several years ago sold his 300-employee business for over $23 million.
What’s more, he is now investing his worth in young black men just like Darrell S. Freeman, guys who’ve got the spark but need someone to fan the flame.
Brad Schmitt is a well-known writer at the Tennessean and has captured quite a tale:
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‘I WANT TO GIVE IT BACK”
Written by Brad Schmitt in the Nashville Tennessean on February 1st, 2022
He was the first one from his working-class family to go to college, and Darrell S. Freeman Sr. had to battle to get his degrees.
After learning to fix TVs and radios at his technical high school in Chattanooga, Freeman studied electronics at DeVry University in Atlanta. But he ran out of money after eight months. Then he went to Chattanooga State Community College, but the general education classes tripped him up. After one quarter — 10 weeks — he flunked out with a 1.234-grade point average, a number that still tickles Freeman.
A few weeks later, a neighborhood buddy asked Freeman to help him move out of his dorm room at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. At soon as he got on campus, Freeman fell in love.
"You see kids happy, some kids had nice cars. It was something I’d never seen before, and I had never been on a college campus like that," Freeman said. "I get to his dorm room, and I say, 'You mean to tell me this is your own room with your own phone, and there’s a place you can go eat every day? Wow, I've gotta go to school here!'"
Freeman found a way — and enough grants and loans — to make that happen.
He continued to struggle academically, at first. But seven years later, Freeman had a bachelor's degree, a master's degree and a strong mentor and friend in a professor he once called a racist.
About a year later, Freeman created an IT company that he sold 25 years later for more than $20 million. Now he invests hundreds of hours and millions of dollars to help young, disadvantaged people go to college and budding Black entrepreneurs succeed.
"I spent the majority of my life getting money," Freeman, 57, said. "I want to spend the majority of the rest of my life giving. "I want to use my voice, my reputation, my resources to find people and help them become better."
Freeman said he concentrates on helping African Americans in part because he grew up without professional Black role models.
'Mr. WREN IS OUR FRIEND'
Freeman's dad was a foundry worker who poured iron for 38 years, and his mom worked as a maid. They rented half a duplex in a Black working-class neighborhood in Chattanooga.
Freeman remembers the light pole near his house that served as home base during games of hide-and-go-seek for him and the other kids who lived nearby. The children also saw drug dealing in the neighborhood.
They rarely saw professionals — doctors, lawyers, and professors — and no one in Freeman's family had gone to college. At 15, Freeman followed a cousin, Kenny Timmons, to Kirkman Technical High School, where Freeman learned to fix TVs and radios.
That school had a relationship with DeVry University in Atlanta, so Freeman moved into an apartment with three other students and enrolled in a 20-month technician program. Even though Freeman had a part-time job at Service Merchandise, he ran out of money in eight months and moved back to Chattanooga. "I couldn't pay the bills," Freeman said. "I'd call home on a Monday to get some money, andmy dad said he didn't get paid 'til Thursday afternoon.
"What do you do from that Monday to Friday?"
With a taste of college life, Freeman wanted more, so he enrolled at less expensive Chattanooga State Community College. But he struggled with the general education courses in English and algebra. He left after one 10-week quarter, not even bothering to get his grades.
Freeman didn't mention DeVry or Chattanooga State in his MTSU application. He got grants, loans and a 20-hour-a-week job loading trucks at UPS. When money got tight, Freeman — and many other students — went to see a "Mr. Wren" in financial aid for gap loans of $500 or more.
"Mr. Wren is our friend," Freeman said, laughing.
Freeman did well in tech classes and struggled with general education, maintaining a 2.0-grade point average through his undergrad years. And then, senior year, he crossed paths with Professor Richard S. Redditt.
'DARRELL, I AM BIASED'
Redditt, an old-school, no-nonsense computer expert with a PhD., filled in halfway through the semester of the microcomputer interfacing class Freeman was taking. The original professor, a much more lenient and easy teacher, had left unexpectedly.
Redditt started teaching from the point in the materials that he thought students should be by then. But that didn't work. "Darrell was in the group of everyone who was completely lost when I got there," Redditt said.
So the students asked him to go way back in the material. And Redditt started teaching at breakneck speed to catch the students up. That proved to be overwhelming for Freeman, who insisted on a meeting with Redditt, his department chair and other faculty members to complain. At that meeting, around a conference table, Freeman accused Redditt of being a racist, a statement he since has retracted.
At the meeting, Redditt said Freeman wasn't doing the work. "Finally, I said, 'Darrell, I am biased,'" Redditt said. "I’m biased against any student who takes up my time and lab space, and I tell them what do, and they come back and ask the same questions over and over again and don’t study in between."
Freeman continued to struggle for a while, and Redditt continued to make himself available.
Then Freeman started studying more, applying more of what he learned and getting better grades in Redditt's class. After working in the computer lab until 2 a.m. one night, Freeman said to the lab technician: "I don’t know what happened to Redditt. He seems pretty nice to me and is answering my questions."
The lab tech laughed, saying, "Redditt hasn’t changed; you have."
The professor eventually successfully advocated for Freeman to get into MTSU grad school. Redditt also hired Freeman as a graduate assistant and eventually advised Freeman on launching his business. He generated $10,000 of business that first year
When Freeman finished graduate school in 1990, with a 4.0-grade point average, he started working for a small Smyrna computer repair company.
Freeman made between $12 and $15 an hour, but the company billed customers between $1,500 and $2,000 a day for Freeman's labor. "That’s when I realized I had a skillset valuable to the marketplace," he said.
With credit cards, about $2,000 in savings and the support of his nurse wife, Freeman launched Advanced Computer Services. In an office the size of a closet. On Murfreesboro Road.
Freeman picked up a Yellow Pages phone book and started cold calling companies, and getting turned down 99 percent of the time. Still, he generated some business, about $10,000 worth in the first year.
Freeman switched the name to Zycron, a name he came up with after a few beers at a local Bar. "I wanted it to have a tech sound, so I put in a Z," he said, laughing.
In 25 years, Freeman built Zycron into a company with 300-plus employees that generated about $40 million a year or more in receipts. Since Freeman sold it for more than $23 million in 2017, he has been working hard to give back to the community.
While running his company, he also served as two-term chairman of the Nashville Chamber of Commerce and civic group 100 Black Men.
In the last 10 years, Freeman also has:
* -- Donated more than $100,000 to his alma mater MTSU for programs helping first-generation college students;
* -- Hosted free ladies lunches to advise and guide women entrepreneurs from around the country;
* -- Invested in and mentored about a dozen young Black entrepreneurs, including the three Tennessee State University roommates who launched Slim & Husky's Pizza Beeria chain
A GAME-CHANGER
Freeman steered the Slim & Husky's team into acquiring real estate, and he partnered with them to buy the Rollout building on Jefferson Street in North Nashville, just a block or so from the original location.
"Man, as cliché as it sounds, D's support was really everything," said co-owner E.J. Reed, the "Slim" in Slim & Husky's.
"We had some loose mentors and got some advice, but we never had any investors. It felt good to have someone with financial resources step up to the plate and really take a chance for us," Reed said. "He was a catalyst for Slim and Husky’s blowing up like it did."
Co-owner Derrick "Moe" Moore called Freeman's support "game-changing" for first-generation black college students.
"To have a mentor who’s been in their shoes, who doesn’t come from money, and then to be where Darrell is?" Moore said. "That delivers the message, they can be something and they can go further than they ever imagined."
Reach Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com or 615-259-8384 or on Twitter
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Trust me, some amazing children and prominent citizens came out of Kirkman. Aren’t we blessed that Darrell S. Freeman, formerly of Chattanooga, was one of them. (Kirkman Technical High School sat on 16 acres on Chestnut Street downtown. It was started in 1928 and closed in 1991. The land was acquired by the city in 1993.)
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