Moving Past Sports for Black Role Models

Johnnie Johnson gets off a plane at John Wayne Airport late Saturday afternoon, returning from a speaking engagement in Oakland. He’ll just about have time to run home and get his tuxedo before appearing at the fifth-annual awards dinner for the Black Chamber of Commerce of Orange County at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim.

He’s got an important reason for wanting that plane to be on time. Johnson, once the All-Pro safety for the Los Angeles Rams, will be honored as the chamber’s Businessman of the Year.

“I’ve received quite a few awards in my time, but this one is very special,” Johnson says.

One reason why is the group giving it to him. Johnson believes the need exists for more African Americans to have chambers of commerce: “African Americans, especially we black men, need to step forward in areas other than athletics to serve as role models for the young people coming up.”

But there’s a second reason this one means so much: Johnnie Johnson saw some hard times after his 10-year pro football career ended in 1990.

He’s written a book, “Personal Approach: A Game Plan for Unlimited Success,” which hit the bookstores nationwide this month. In the book, he explains how he lost close to $1 million in bad investments and Orange County’s faltering real estate market. Much of the book talks about how he applied his own principles to make a comeback in business. Now he’s head of two Anaheim-based companies--one in real estate, the other in research development--and is busy on the motivational-speaker circuit. He soon begins a 39-city speaking tour for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

“These are busy times, but it’s all been great,” he says.

His book is prominently displayed at the Orange County Sports Hall of Fame at Anaheim Stadium, where I picked up a copy. Johnson is proud that he wrote it without a ghost writer, but admits the task was more awesome than he expected.

A good part of it is common-sense advice, like “Prioritize things in order of importance to you.” Or “The higher your standard, the better product you provide, the better you perform, the more demand you will find yourself to be in, the more control you’ll have, and the more you’ll be able to demand in return.” And Johnson includes some of the advice he grew up with from his mother (who raised 11 children): “A still tongue makes a wise head,” and “Why worry when you can pray.”

But as you might expect, the book is loaded with comparisons between the football world and the business world, and how the same principles for success work in both. (“Top athletes do what it takes and a little bit more.”)

Johnson also uses O.J. Simpson’s lead defense attorney, Johnnie Cochran, as an example of success. Though I’m no admirer of Cochran’s, I knew Johnson was right on one statement: Cochran, Johnson wrote, was successful because “he approached the Simpson case as if he owned it.”

Other Winners: The Black Chamber of Commerce is honoring numerous others for outstanding service. Among them: Cal State University President Milton Gordon will receive its Distinguished Service Award, and Lake Forest City Councilwoman Kathryn McCullough its Humanitarian Award. McCullough heads the Adopt-A-Neighbor program to help feed the poor.

But the big winners at the dinner will be those students who benefit from the scholarships that the chamber funds through its annual tennis tournament. The tournament generates nearly $100,000 for scholarships each year at Cal State Fullerton, Chapman University and UC Irvine. This year it has added three community colleges: Rancho Santiago, Saddleback and Cypress.

Still Seeking Respect: It was 30 years ago this month that Western State University College of Law was born in a small rented facility in Anaheim with 138 students. It later moved to its permanent home across State College Boulevard from Cal State Fullerton.

It’s still not an American Bar Assn.-accredited school, but it turns out a whopping number of lawyers each year. So many, in fact, it now boasts that one out of four lawyers in Orange County is from Western State.

Municipal Judge Margaret Anderson says she knows it’s true, because she sees them in her court. Anderson, by the way, is a very proud Western State graduate with a bias she doesn’t even try to hide.

“I’ve seen a lot of Harvard grads come through who could learn a thing or two about the law from some of these Western State grads,” she recently told me.

The school will close its Irvine campus in the fall, but says it’s only part of a plan to concentrate on ABA accreditation. Expect a lot more Western State grads to hang up their shingle--more than 350 graduated in May.

Making It Big: Graduations are going on all around us this week. I doubt there was one more special than the Saddleback High School ceremony at the Santa Ana Bowl on Wednesday. In the audience cheering on graduate Janelle Garcia, 19, were family, friends, and her doctor, Richard Koch, of Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. That’s a place where Garcia has been admitted 70 times since she was 3 months old.

Garcia suffers from MA, a metabolic defect similar to diabetes. She’s the nation’s oldest survivor of the disease. About half die before the age of 10. Garcia’s family says she plans to go on to Rancho Santiago College to take sign language courses.

Wrap-Up: If the Black Chamber of Commerce had a Good Friend award, Johnson could win that one too. His best friend on the Rams was fellow defensive player Kirk Collins, who died of cancer, at age 25, in 1984.

Johnson promised his friend just before his death that he’d make sure Collins’ son, Christopher, had financial security for college. So Johnson set up his own charity tennis tournament, with proceeds going to the Kirk Collins Memorial Scholarship fund. The tourn-ament--set this year for Oct. 19--now also benefits the Boys and Girls Club of Fullerton.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or sending a fax to (714) 966-7711.