The Rev. Dale A. Johnson called students to a life of serving others as he outlined his life of leadership and extraordinary experiences to an audience of several hundred in Talley ballroom Monday night.
Johnson, this year’s honoree of the Role Model Leader’s Forum, detailed his present work at an orphanage in the Dominican Republic. He detailed a desperate situation where workers from nearby Haiti work under dismal conditions as indentured servants. Children are sometimes abandoned, left on the streets or even in toilets.
He said the children the orphanage cares for have difficulty even being recognized as human beings, being born without birth certificates and sometimes not even given names. Through more than two years of efforts, and supplemented by volunteers such as students from the Alternative Spring Break Program sponsored by the Center for Student Leadership, Ethics & Public Service, Johnson said the situation has begun to change.
Johnson emphasized that leadership involves a core integrity value of serving the needs of others. He challenged students to impact change.
Johnson outlined his philosophy of leadership which revolves around three elements — understanding themselves, providing an environment which people can go and be creative, and having core values.
“A leader has to be at peace with himself or herself, both strengths and weaknesses,” said Johnson. He explained that everybody wants transparency and it attracts people.
“Do you realize the power of moral witness?” he asked.
Michael Adelman said he did.
“What he has done is really inspiring,” said Adelman, senior in microbiology and sociology and a student volunteer at the orphanage. Adelman, part of a group of 25 students who did volunteer work at the orphanage during spring break last year, taught English to native Spanish-speaking children and performed construction projects.
“The N.C. State students just coalesced into a unit that came to know each other very well,” he said.
The trip ended up having additional significance for Adelman. There he met Kelly Thomas, to whom he is now engaged to be married.
“The fact that we were both there in the first place, said a lot about us-to each other,” he said.
The works Johnson did at the orphanage also had an impact on Sean Flaherty, a junior in political science, who was also greatly impacted by working at the orphanage with Johnson.
“All Dale’s life experiences have enabled him to articulate the core values and emotions that we all have,” he said.
Flaherty said he wants to go back.
“This is one of the most valuable experiences I’ve ever had and has shaped the path I have chosen for myself.”
Johnson recounted some of his past experiences. While working in the Kurdish area of Iraq, his call to work among children was confirmed.
One young boy walked 60 miles fleeing the ravages of war. Several of the boy’s family members died from exposure and starvation. The young boy asked Johnson to play marbles with him. He did, and the two, in the midst of the horrible situation, played marbles and laughed.
“It was a divine gift, and the beginning of a lifelong divine gift of ministry to children,” he said.
Johnson was the only Westerner working in Northern Iraq during the Gulf War and was twice kidnapped by terrorist groups. The first time, in 1991, members of Sadaam Hussein’s Republican Guard kidnapped him. His abductors knocked his front teeth out, and then executed all three of his cellmates. Because he could speak both Kurdish and Aramaic, he gained favor from one of his guards and was eventually released and returned to service in the Kurdish area of Iraq.
In 1996, the terrorist organization, Hezbollah, again kidnapped him, tortured him and held him for four months demanding money as ransom — releasing him when the money was not forthcoming.
Johnson has learned seven different Middle Eastern languages, and became recognized as a scholar in the language of Aramaic and became the linguistic consultant for the movie, The Passion of the Christ.