From Jimmy Freiberg’s perspective, Father’s Day 2016 was shaping up to be pretty perfect.
He’d badly wanted a girl from the moment the previous Halloween when he and his wife, Vanessa, found out they were expecting, and a sonogram around Christmastime confirmed his wish had come true. In fact, Jimmy won a bet with Vanessa about the gender, earning the right to choose their daughter’s name.
And as her June 11 due date came and went quietly, followed by uneventful days on the 12th, then the 13th, then the 14th, then the 15th, then ...
“I mean, the closer it got to Father’s Day, the more we were, like, aiming for that day,” Vanessa recalls, smiling.
They hit the target squarely: At 5:38 a.m. on Sunday, June 19, Charley Quinn Freiberg — named for DC Comics hero Harley Quinn (with a “C” added by Mom) — finally came into the world. Later in the day, Vanessa surprised Jimmy with a onesie for Charley. On the front were these words: “I’m Your Father’s Day Present! Best. Gift. Ever.”
In the years since, mid-June has offered the Freibergs multiple opportunities for family celebrations, packed with theme parties and photo shoots in honor of Charley, and brunches and trips to the movie theater in honor of Dad. But this Sunday marks the first time since she was born that her birthday will fall exactly on Father’s Day.
Jimmy and Vanessa had been anticipating the momentous occasion for years; and Jimmy in particular could hardly wait.
“So, this year, I had planned to re-make that shirt to say, ‘I’m still your best gift,’” Vanessa says, smiling, as her almost-6-year-old daughter squirms restlessly on the couch next to her.
“Unfortunately, that won’t happen.”
Charley Freiberg, who will turn 6 on Father’s Day, holds a photo of her and her dad, Jimmy Freiberg, who was killed after a stray bullet entered through a window of their Charlotte apartment on Saturday, March 5. JEFF SINER jsiner@charlotteobserver.com
‘Oh my God. Oh my God.’
Jimmy was in Charley’s bedroom when he was struck in the neck by the stray bullet that came through her window and killed him, at roughly 3 a.m. on this past March 5.
It was a shocking, tragic, devastating end to a night of family fun. Less than six hours earlier, Jimmy had gone out to meet his adult son, Matthew, for a late-Friday-night screening of “The Batman,” as Charley curled up with Vanessa for an at-home movie night and sleepover back in their Steele Creek apartment.
Mother and daughter fell asleep together, in Jimmy and Vanessa’s bed, while he was still at the theater.
It’s not clear exactly when he returned home, but based on the length of the movie, it was probably around 1:30 a.m. It’s also not clear how long he stayed up after he got home, but he was a legendary night owl who often would pour over piles of sports trading cards at all hours. (By day, he was the manager of AAA Collectibles in Matthews.)
And it’s not at all clear why — when he finally turned in — he decided to sleep in Charley’s bed instead of on the living room couch, which is where he typically crashed when they were doing girls’ nights in the master bedroom.
What Vanessa does know is this:
She was roused by the sound of their dog, Nala, barking and nudging at her. Then she heard the pop-pop-pop of the gunfire. She shook Charley awake and swept her out of bed and into the bathroom. “‘Don’t come out,’” Vanessa remembers saying, “‘until I tell you it’s OK.’”
As the shooting continued, Vanessa’s next thought was of Jimmy. Was he home yet? Was he awake or asleep?
She went to look for those answers, took two steps into the living room, and turned to see Jimmy burst out of Charley’s bedroom.
“‘Oh my God,’” she remembers him saying. “‘Oh my God.’” Then he fell to the ground as blood poured from his body. A medical assistant by trade, Vanessa instinctively knew she needed to apply pressure to the wound, but there was so much blood she couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
Vanessa called 911 and started CPR on her husband, but “every time like I would do a compression, more blood just gushed out.”
By the time paramedics arrived, Jimmy was gone. He was 48.
Jimmy Freiberg spent his career in a variety of jobs, including as a real estate agent and — most recently — as manager of a collectibles and trading-card shop in Matthews. But he was perhaps best-known for working as a nightclub DJ at gigs like this one several years ago in uptown Charlotte. JEFF SINER jsiner@charlotteobserver.com
Jimmy became a dad for the first time when he was 22 years old, near the end of a previous marriage that had soured quickly.
For the four years prior, his adulthood had been full of structure thanks to his military service; he was a lance corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps while stationed at the Air Station New River in Jacksonville, North Carolina, from 1991-95. But after being discharged, Jimmy immersed himself in Charlotte nightlife both professionally — working at various bars and clubs in the city — and personally, with the party scene becoming not just a job for him, but a lifestyle.
And fatherhood, at the outset, was something Jimmy endured more than it was something he enjoyed.
“When I was younger, I didn’t get to see him a lot,” recalls Jimmy’s son, Matthew, “and I just always thought it was because he was busy with work.”
In fact, when Matthew was a middle-schooler, the two were barely spending any time together at all, and Matthew was beginning to show signs of resentment toward his father. Then in 2010, right around Matthew’s 13th birthday, Jimmy met Vanessa at a watch party for the World Cup at Blackfinn Ameripub in the old EpiCentre.
Their courtship lasted more than four years, but even though Vanessa was enamored with his goofiness, his carpe-diem approach to life and his independent spirit, they weren’t a sure thing. The two things that concerned her the most? His drinking and his parenting.
“So,” Vanessa recalls, “once Jimmy and I started to get really serious, I said, ‘Look. If we’re going down this route of establishing a future, I can’t have you be this father that you’re being. And your drinking is also a big factor in it.’ And I basically ... gave him an ultimatum ... . I said, ‘You either get your s--- together, and you step up as a parent, or we’re done.’”
It worked. She says he quit drinking practically overnight, began transitioning away from nightclub jobs, and went to work making up for lost time with his son.
Matthew would only text us for this story — he says it’s still hard for him to talk about his dad — but did say this: “My opinion is that Vanessa was the best thing that could of ever happened to my dad.”
Jimmy and Vanessa would marry on Oct. 4, 2014, at which point he and Matthew were well on their way to becoming best friends.
Jimmy Freiberg, right, on his wedding day in 2014 with Vanessa Freiberg and his son Matthew. Courtesy of Vanessa Freiberg
Exactly one year later, Vanessa learned she was pregnant.
She revealed it to Jimmy by putting together a trick-or-treat bag filled with baby-related cues, including a tiny orange pumpkin, a yellow bib, and a card that read, simply, “Hi DAD.”
“I remember his face — ’cause he had big eyes, and so his eyes just happened to get even bigger,” Vanessa recalls, “and I was like, ‘Oh my God, are you gonna have a panic attack?’ ... I think he was more excited than I was, at first.”
From that moment on, she says, Jimmy was as enthusiastic an expectant dad as any there’s been — always on the lookout for stuff for the nursery and cute baby clothes, always engaged with things like ultrasounds and check-ups. “Just (having a greater) maturity level ... and knowing that he was more stable this go-around then the first time made a difference ... in that way of, ‘I have another chance to really do things right.’
“And he took full advantage of it.”
‘He always went above and beyond.’
Asked whether Dad or Mom would be more likely to take her for ice cream, Charley responds quickly: “Daaaddy.”
Vanessa nods and laughs. “Mm-hmm. Or get you a new toy?”
“Daddyyyyyy!” Charley repeats, cheerfully.
“Daddy, yeah,” Vanessa says. “You learned real quick who got you what, huh?” Charley covers her mouth as she giggles. “And if I said no and I was in a different room, who would you go to?”
“Daddyyyyyyyyy!!” Charley repeats.
“Daddy. Or if you knew I was gonna say no, who would you ask instead?”
“Daddyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!”
“Daddy,” Vanessa says, laughing again. “So she learned real quick who to go to for what.”
Incidentally, Jimmy was notorious for spoiling her not just with ice cream, toys and yeses that could override Mom’s nos, but also with real quality time: singing together in the car on the way to school (he always drove her because Vanessa had to be at work early); going on daddy-daughter dates to the mini-golf course or the pedicure place; playing songs for her to see if she thought he should add them to the playlists for his DJ gigs; crowding around his phone to watch TikToks instead of reading books when he was in charge of bedtime.
He also worked hard trying to make up for lost time with his son, routinely planning trips for the two of them to different major league and minor league ballparks so they could bond over their shared love of baseball.
“He always went above and beyond to make me and my sister happy,” says Matthew, now 25, “and always tried to give us the world.”
Perhaps the greatest example of Jimmy’s evolution as a parent, however, came when he and Vanessa dropped Charley off at daycare for the first time.
“He was the one who cried,” Vanessa recalls. “I was ready. I’m like, ‘Here, take this child. I’m good. I’m ready to go back to work.’ He was the one who cried and was like, ‘I can’t do this. We need to figure something else out. I can’t have her be in a room with all these other babies and not get all the attention.’”
Jimmy cried again on Charley’s first day of preschool, and yet again on her last day of preschool. Vanessa, meanwhile, always managed to hold it together.
Until — alone at Charley’s graduation from kindergarten last month — it was her turn, finally, to break down.
Says Vanessa Freiberg, pictured with her daughter Charley: “We just need to know and remember that Daddy loved us, and was always there for us.” JEFF SINER jsiner@charlotteobserver.com
‘I love him more than anything.’
Vanessa says she grew up in an environment where crying was a bad thing. And while it’s not something she deliberately tried to pass on to Charley, perhaps via genetics, perhaps by osmosis, her daughter was prone to not showing her emotions either.
In the first seven days after Jimmy was killed, Vanessa didn’t see Charley cry. Not once.
Before the funeral service, however, Vanessa asked her daughter to tell her something she would want people to know about her daddy, and that she’d share Charley’s message in her speech about Jimmy with those who gathered to mourn. It was simple: “That I love him more than anything.”
The moment she said those words during her remarks to the huge crowd that spilled out into the hallway of the McEwen Funeral Home-Pineville Chapel on Park Road, she saw Charley start to cry.
They’ve both shed more tears since, and there are plenty of life events and daughter and son milestones to come that they’ll wish Jimmy was around to enjoy, the most imminent being the emotional double-whammy of Father’s Day and Charley’s birthday that’ll hit this Sunday. Amid the sadness, too, is Vanessa’s anger at the fateful shootout’s participants, none of which yet have been identified to the family or arrested.
And in the 3-1/2 months since, she’s had to fight off the constant barrage of what-ifs that have invaded her thoughts.
“Had he stayed asleep for two more seconds and not gotten up right then and there, he would probably still be there,” Vanessa says. “If he’d fell asleep on the couch like he normally would have, he probably would have still been here. Had she been in her bed, it could have been her.
“But you can’t go through that motion, either, ’cause then you go through the downward spiral. At the end of the day, it doesn’t change the outcome. At the end of the day, nothing one does can bring him back.”
So despite the pain and the grief that still lingers, Vanessa is trying as hard as she can to inject into their lives the kind of laughter that Jimmy had always brought to them.
For instance, she says that when she decided in April to move ahead with plans to take Charley to southern California — a trip they’d originally planned with Jimmy — Charley’s biggest concern was, “What if somebody sits in Daddy’s seat on the airplane?”
“So we spun it to be like, ‘Well, let’s pretend like Daddy’s sitting on top of them. And we’ll just laugh,’” she recalls, laughing at the memory. “And somebody did sit in Daddy’s seat, both ways. But we said Daddy was sitting on top of them. And Daddy was bigger, so it made it more funny. Right?”
Charley nods, smiling.
Then, Vanessa continues, when they went to Disneyland, “it’s like, ‘OK, yeah, this is different because Daddy’s not here, but think about how cranky Daddy would be at this point, walking around for 12 hours in Disney going crazy.’”
Charley’s smile grows a little more.
Vanessa says it tears her up to think of how Charley’s memories of her dad will fade as she gets older. “But all I can do is continue to share those moments with her. Like, when she’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I don’t remember that,’ I’m like, ‘Well, yeah, let me tell you about it. This is what you and Daddy did, and these are things that you guys shared and were goofy about. Your personality is his personality.’ ... You’re Dad’s child. ...
“I always say, ‘You look like me, but you act like him,’ right?”
Vanessa laughs again, and Charley smiles again, and anyone who knows Jimmy would probably say that — given the circumstances — those are the best Father’s Day gifts he could have possibly hoped for this year.
Charley Freiberg and her late father, Jimmy Freiberg. Courtesy of Vanessa Freiberg
A group of Jimmy Freiberg’s friends have organized a charity golf tournament in his honor. Called The Jazzy Classic, it’s set for Monday, June 20, at Pine Island Country Club in Charlotte. All money raised will go to the Freiberg family. Details: jazzy-classic.perfectgolfevent.com.
This story was originally published June 17, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
Théoden Janes has spent nearly 20 years covering entertainment and pop culture for the Observer. He also thrives on telling emotive long-form stories about extraordinary Charlotteans and — as a veteran of three dozen marathons and two Ironman triathlons — occasionally writes about endurance and other sports.Support my work with a digital subscription
