Professionalism isn't always learned in professional school

Professionalism isn't always learned in professional school. I credit that trait in my life to a great friend, mentor, father-figure, & hero - Stanley Truett Johnson. Thankful for his fierce influence on me. Remembering his birthday. He would have been 89 today. The influence of Key Club is lifelong. The first time I met Stanley he was the age I am now. That just blows my mind for a second! He became so important in my life. I had the high honor and great privilege of delivering a eulogy at his funeral nearly 24 years ago, the one Key Clubber who could bridge whatever gap remained between those who knew him only from Key Club days and those who knew him after he retired and began a wonderful renaissance with Ann.

Today, I'm sharing the post made a couple years back by the late William W. Horton , another former Alabama Key Club leader. Bill's life was cut way too short also, and I'm thankful for our shared mountaintop experience both in Key Club and with its leading man, Stanley Johnson.

"I am grateful to Joe Powell for mentioning in a post that today would have been Stanley T. Johnson's 87th birthday.

As I have mentioned on occasion before, a very large number of good things that have happened in my life are traceable more-or-less directly to my having been invited to join the Demopolis High School Key Club in 1974. That in turn eventually led to my serving as Alabama District Key Club Governor, which broadened my horizons in a way that almost nothing else likely would have, and led to doors opening for me that I never would have known to look for. (It also led, in an odd but fairly direct way, to my marriage.)

Stanley Johnson was for many years the District Administrator for the Alabama District of Key Club International , the Kiwanis International -sponsored high school service organization. This was not really a task he needed in his life; I'm sure his full-time day job as a middle school principal provided quite enough to fill his plate. But on almost every weekend, Stanley would be out on the road attending Key Club rallies across the state, and when he got to stay home he was involved in doing all the paperwork, planning the conventions, helping local Kiwanis Clubs charter new Key Clubs, and so on.

When I became a Key Club Lieutenant Governor, one of a dozen or so for the state, as a high school junior, I began spending lots of time with Stanley (of course, he was "Mr. Johnson" to me then; one of the great rites of passage for ex-Alabama Key Club leaders was the point where you realized you had known him long enough and been out of school long enough to call him by his first name). He encouraged me to run for Governor and, of course, was a tremendous resource and support when I served in that role. More significant, though, was what Stanley did for all the boys that came under his tutelage (in those days, Key Club was mostly an all-male organization; that's no longer the case): He showed us, by word, deed and example, that he expected us to be leaders. He let us know his expectations, he chastised us gently, or less gently as appropriate, if we fell short of them, and he pushed us to see that we had a responsibility to the people and communities around us that went beyond ourselves.

Joe's post earlier today talked about Stanley's having taught him professionalism, and that's probably a good way to put it. Stanley, and the team of Kiwanis leaders he organized around him, showed a generation of 14-to-18-year-olds that they could meet the expectations of excellence and leadership that Key Club - especially Key Club in Alabama - asked of them. I can say, and I'm sure I'm not nearly alone in this, that Stanley was one of the first adult mentors I had who treated me like, not an equal, but someone whom he fully expected to be an equal someday and for whom he was prepared to do everything in his power to make sure that happened.

Over the course of my life, I think I've had some success at being a leader. That comes in large part from the many great examples of leadership I've had the privilege to see up close, but it also comes from those mentors who, even when I was a very great distance from showing any leadership skills, not only taught those skills to me but showed me that they had the confidence I could learn how to use them. Stanley wasn't the only one, but he was a really important one.

Thanks, Joe, for the reminder about Stanley's birthday. And thanks, Stanley, for the lessons you taught to me and so many other Alabama Key Clubbers for so many years. You touched, and changed, more lives in your too-short 65 years than most folks could imagine. I'm grateful I was one of them."