JOE JOHNS Suddenly, Life's Most Routine Acts Were Not So Routine Anymore

40 PROFILES IN PROMINENCE 41 JOE JOHNS Suddenly, life's most routine acts were not so routine anymore. "HE's JusT JoE" Johns' report to the nation on a chilly evening focused on another inexplicable, senseless, public murder. And Joe, speaking with poise by Dave Wellman and in his usual firm voice from the scene of the latest incident, said the D.C. sniper was still unidentified, still at large, and still killing. Thousands, Johns included, were uneasy at best. Many were frightened. "That was kind of rough," Johns recalled a few months later, the tension gone but hardly forgotten. "It was about the scariest story I've done." oe Johns re~embers her only as Miss Gullas, his sixth-grade It might have been scary, but Johns appeared cool and trustworthy teacher at ~Ighland Elementary in Columbus, Ohio. Joe doesn't .J recall her fust name, but he will never forget a few choice under the pressure. Was this the same person who once described words of advice from Miss Gullas when he was 12 years himself as "pretty useless" as a child? old. , Joe Johns has come a long way since those childhood days in the 1960's, when he lived with his parents and two stepbrothers in a house "She said if I didn't bordered by a picket fence in a "tidy little neighborhood" on the west learn to speak in front of side of Columbus, or even since his days of disco dancing the night people, I'd never amount to away, shot putting and discus throwing at a championship level, and "He listened to Miss anything," Joe says. acting on stage to rave reviews while at Marshall University. Joe, an Miss Gullas must have Gullas ... and now the award-winning professional journalist and 1980 Marshall graduate with seen something in the world listens to him." a bachelor's degree in political science, puts the trust of an entire nation youngster that not even he on his shoulders night after night. After two decades of reporting in knew existed. After all, by his Washington, it's a trust he's earned. own admission, Johns was "He prepared himselffor this," says Dr. Troy Stewart of Marshall's clumsy and awkward, and Political Science department, one of Johns' former professors. "It was even stuttered when under pressure or in front of people. But, he listened to Miss Gullas. And almost like he was ordained. Once you get into the big time, you don't now, the world listens to him. just rip and read. Those on-camera people are not just pretty faces. You've got to have something else. Joe will tell you he's a political Joe John~ is an NBC News conespondent in Washington, D.C., ~nd has been smce 1993. He reports calmly and with confidence, even scientist who reports the news." m t~e most trying circumstances. In autumn 2002, as an anxious Fortunately, alleged D.C. snipers Lee BoydMalvo and John Allen audience watched and listened, Joe related stories of folks in the D.C. Muhammad were hunted down and arrested, but not before allegedly area ~o pa:alyzed by fear that they refused to leave their homes. Others, shooting 19 people and killing 13 in Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, the he said, did venture out, b'-!t many were afraid to stand alongside their District of Columbia, Virginia, and Maryland. It was Johns' duty to cars even long enough to pump a tank of gasoline. cover this story for NBC, and that meant "nerve-racking" daily assignments that had him guarding his back. The situation was similar, 42 PROFILES IN PROMINENCE PROFILES IN PROMINENCE 43 albeit on a smaller level, to reporters who were embedded with the career, a career he loves, even in the most trying times-a career military during the Iraq war. in which he excels. "You had no idea if the suspect or suspects might have doubled It's a profession Joe Johns somewhat expected, even as a teen, back," Joe says of the danger and accompanying tension. "Everybody though he knew few attain such lofty status in the media. While still a wondered whether the sniper would come back." student at West High School in Columbus, he jotted down a list of The tension had eased by the time Joe and his colleagues three or four things he would like to do with his life. followed up the sniper story on the NBC Nightly News broadcast "Being a network news correspondent was one of the things on the day after Malvo and Muhammad were arrested. For that report, the list," Joe says. He also wrote down lawyer and actor as possibilities. titled "The Arrest of the Snipers," the Radio-Television News The road to D.C., of course, first ran abut 130 miles south of Directors Association selected NBC News as winner of the Columbus through Huntington, West Virginia, and Marshall. prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for best newscast in the TV Johns, along with stepbrothers John Johns and Jeffery Johns, Network category in 2003. Another NBC News correspondent was raised in Columbus by his mother, Betty Jo, and his stepfather, heavily involved in the sniper coverage was David Bloom, who Russell Johns. His mother and biological father, Joseph Brooks, also put himself in harm's way months later during the war. While divorced in Tennessee when Joe was very young. embedded with the U.S. Army's 3'd Infantry Division outside "We weren't rich," Johns says of his Columbus upbringing. "We Baghdad in early April, Bloom died of an apparent pulmonary were probably lower middle class." In the mid-1980's, Joe visited embolism, stunning viewers and his co-workers-including Joe Brooks in Tennessee for the first time since he moved from there to Johns. Ohio with his mother. Today, Joe says the Brooks family is a big part "I worked with him fairly closely, particularly on the sniper story," of his life. Joe says. "He was an extremely focused, driven correspondent. His "I can count among my very best friends a cousin on the Brooks death shocked us all. It was surreal. It's still hard to believe. He was at side (Roland), who happened to be attending Howard University in the top of his game. I still haven't been able to make sense of it." Washington, D.C., unbeknownst to me," Johns says. Today, Roland is The terror-filled three weeks tracking the snipers, mostly in a comedian, a.k.a. Buddy Lewis, and lives in Hollywood. He has the D.C. area, were a stark contrast to the brief, but joyous, time appeared in several films, a couple of plays, and a number of TV shows, Johns had spent at Marshall about two weeks before the snipers including "Def Comedy Jam." claimed their first victim. He had returned to his alma mater from Johns' acting career began in the seventh grade in a one-act play his Darnestown, Maryland, home to speak at an alumni luncheon called "Anyone for the Moon," in which he played the president of the one of numerous events he has attended on the campus since he moon. The year before, hardly anyone would have expected him to graduated. The mood was festive. participate in a play or stand on stage for anything. But then, Miss While on campus Johns visited the Lefty Rollins Track, where as Gullas intervened. Suddenly, Johns wanted to play baseball and wanted a scholarship athlete he'd won championships and established school to be on stage. Miss Gullas, he says, had a big influence on him. "She records in the shot put and discus while attending Marshall in the late stressed competitive academics," he says. "Students got points in class 1970's. And, he spoke to a large crowd attending a brunch in the for answering history questions correctly. The greatest gift she gave Memorial Student Center, a speech focused mostly on his high-profile me was a love for education. Some of my other teachers had made job with NBC. As usual when Johns comes back to Huntington, pleasant school a less-than-enjoyable experience. Miss Gullas made learning thoughts of his college days resurface before he returns to his chosen a pleasure." 44 PROFILES IN PROMINENCE PROFILES IN PROMINENCE 45 Johns says he was involved in theater "a little bit" in high So, he chose Marshall, where his passion for the sport made s.chool a~.d "my. parents always had me speaking in church, things track and field his top priority, but hardly his only focus. Johns hke that. So, h1s public speaking continued to improve from year also excelled in theater while at the university, starring in numerous to year. productions. He was nominated for the prestigious Irene Ryan His interest in politics began when he was named governor at the Award at the American College Theater Festival. He also won a Buckeye Boys State in 1974. "That was a nine-day crash course in scholarship in a national acting competition from the National ~tate government," Johns said in an interview with the Herald-Dispatch Society of Arts and Letters (NASL) Acting Competition in Chicago m 1979. "That's where I acquired an interest in politics ... how in June 1979. His audition pieces were the part of Richard, Duke people get things done." of Gloucester, in a scene from Shakespeare's Henry VI, and the That interest extended to Marshall, where he was a fine student, prologue from the playlet, The Blind Man at the Party.

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