A Thought About Roland Johnson
By Robert Perske

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(On October 8, 1994, a Celebration of Roland Johnson's Life was held at the Church on the Mall, Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. Bob planned to attend, but "got a call to join with some others who are trying to keep a man with a disability from being executed" and was unable to attend. He sent these words in his place).

A great man named Robert Penn Warren believed:

That if you really want to know a man,
You must know his passion.
I knew Roland Johnson because
I knew his passion.

There was no mistaking his passion.
He had lots of it.
Roland always spoke
With the passion of an honest lawyer,
Always with that wooing note in his voice.

That became a beckoining finger
That drew you close
And made you listen to his hunger
For dignity and freedom
For all of his friends.

Words failed him sometimes,
And his sentences got mixed up,
But I always felt his urgency.
And I always got the point
Because I felt, really felt his passion.

Then I got to thinking how I rub elbows
With some people who have lots of smarts:
reading and writing smarts
adding and subtracting smarts
thinking and professional smarts...

But they possess the passion of a dead pigeon.

* * * * *

So if the Good Lord came to me
And suddenly gave me the choice
Between having either
The smarts of the smarties
Or the passion of Roland Johnson ...

I would choose ... Roland's passion every time.

-- Bob Perske