Jane Clayson's Introduction, by Diane Weese

Two of my most favorite things, Children and Music! 300 tender voices shouting to the world, “Let there be Peace on Earth!” Could there be any greater sign of peace than what we see in front of us. Our world needs more of these signs. What signs or marks are we leaving on this world. Jessica Sprague a new mother expresses it this way. “I have never felt more surely than now my purpose and place in the world. I know now that you my sweet son, you are my gift of purpose and place, you are the mark I will make on the world.” What a scary thought to think we are leaving personal marks in this world! We always feel everyone around us would do a much better job. The person sitting next to you must be the perfect parent. Just turn to them and ask them. ( No, not now, but maybe during our lunch break.) Elaine Jack says, “Sometimes I fear we have expectations that the good life is the life being led by someone else.” Doesn’t it seem that the grass always seems a lot greener on the other side of the fence. My Grandpa Woolley loved to tell the story that was in one of his readers in elementary school called, The House with Golden Windows. Let me share with you the very shortened version. Johnny who had just turned five lived on a cattle ranch on the prairie. A mile and a half to the west was another home. Everyday Johnny would look outside and in the distance he would see that this house had golden windows. One day he couldn’t wait any longer and decided he would go and see this house. He grabbed his lunch and as he walked he enjoyed the sights along the way. He stopped for lunch and fed the ducks as he walked near some water. Time was passing quickly and he knew he must get there. As he stood up to resume his journey he noticed that the windows of the house he was going to did not look as golden as they had looked in the morning, but his curiosity drove him on. Finally he reached the house, the windows were not golden at all, but plain windows just like the windows in his own home. By this time the sun was low on the horizon and as he turned to start home he noticed a miracle. The windows of his own home were now golden!” Let’s go Home” as our theme states today, finding that we all have golden windows. This can be possible only by doing just as our American Mothers pledge states, to ask God’s help as a parent in today’s world and to remember that with God, all things are possible.

And now it is my pleasure to introduce to you our emcee and next speaker Jane Clayson Johnson. I would like to share part of an article that was published in the Boston Globe in October of 2004 by Irene Sege.“These days 4 a.m. finds Jane Clayson Johnson rocking in a blue glider, feeding newborn Ella Elizabeth Johnson in a room illuminated only by a night light and the soft glow of a nearby street lamp. The last time Johnson made a habit of being awake at this hour was in 2002, at the end of her three-year stint as cohost of “The Early Show” on CBS, when she’d rush around her Park Avenue condominium getting ready for a workday that began at 4:30 a.m. Some of her leftover business suits hang in the baby’s closet, next to the tiny jumpsuits that have launched little Ella’s wardrobe.

In December, 2003, Johnson who by then was working with “48 Hours” and “The CBS Evening News,” left a 15-year career to live with her new husband and start a family. On Jan. 4th, the day she would have commenced an attractive four-year contract with another broadcast network, she found out she was expecting her first baby. “That confirmed it for me,” she says. “I never wanted to be defined by what I did for a living.”

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Johnson had just interviewed the actor Ray Romano when a voice in her earpiece told her planes had crashed into the World Trade Center. Her memories as a New Yorker, of seeing people salute firefighters on passing trucks, still bring tears to her eyes. Suddenly the news was at her door. “It changed me just to realize how quickly life can change.” she says.

Johnson anchored the first anniversary of Sept.11 at ground zero with Dan Rather. “I had just come back from the White House, interviewing Laura Bush. I was at the top. I was sitting next to Dan Rather, doing all these things. While it was wonderful, there was an emptiness there,”she says. “I don’t have those high-profile situations in my life anymore, but I am more happy, more complete, more fulfilled than I was.”

Jane and her wonderful husband, Mark, have now welcomed another addition to the family…little William who was born several weeks premature. They lovingly cared for him for many weeks until he was able to go home with his family. We thank Jane for all she has done to help promote this conference and for her many “marks” that she has made on the world. Please welcome Jane Clayson Johnson.

Diane Weese