UFH: Dr. Joseph Johnson

[Ken Leung]

January 2nd, 2001, 10:30PM EST

I was looking around this website of a robotics team call Chief Delphi (what kind of a name is that anyway?!) earlier today. I got the url from a former GRT student who showed it in a team meeting long time ago. This week is winter break, and me and my high school friends just came back from dinner. They don’t understand why I am still around the team even though I am in Berkeley now, but they just don’t know how fun it is. Anyway, I was wandering around this website out of boredom, and noticed this new message called “Misdirected E-mail Unveils 2001 Game 3 days Early…”. I quickly looked at the message and was completely bewildered by its content. I couldn’t believe it was true! I still can’t believe it is true! This must be some kind of a sick joke designed to torture all kinds of people across the country… …right?

January 4th, 2001, 06:00PM EST

I forgot to set my alarm clock this morning and when the door bell rang at 8:30am, I knew I was in trouble. Ken Krieger is at the door, and my mom told him I haven’t wakened up yet. He went, “Uh oh.” I jumped off the bed and quickly pack everything I need for the Manchester trip, and we made it to the airport just in time. After hours of plane ride and layover, we finally reached the Holiday Inn in Manchester, New Hampshire. Jason Morrella was in the lobby greeting some California coaches, and I wandered around. I bump into a small group of engineers, they went around the circle introducing themselves, and there I was, at the end of the line, being stared at by some team 47 coaches and adults, drawing a complete blank in my head, not knowing what to say. So I did what every embarrassed Asian teenager would do, and quickly duck away and listened from far away.

Among the group was this guy talking about this e-mail he showed to everyone, and how he got into so much trouble with his Delphi boss, and how some guy overreacted and accused him of doing something illegal. Then he continued to talk about how late he was to the airport earlier today, and how in the middle of traffic he flagged down this old lady and ask her to park the car for him. He got her contact info, then proceeded to abandon his car and ran for the terminal in a timely manner. After the story, he excused himself and told everyone he got some slices to finish for the workshops.

Who does he think he is anyway?

January 5th, 2001, 10:00AM EST

I was wondering around FIRST place today attending workshops. These are all very cool workshops but I didn’t understand much of anything. During a motor selection workshop, the same guy from last night showed up and introduced himself as Joe Johnson, along with his friend, Mike Ciavaglia from team 47 Chief Delphi. So that’s him! I was kind of nervous at the whole experience, so I quickly settled in a corner and listened the whole time. This is GREAT STUFF!!! Motors, graphs, formulas… I can actually understand what they are talking about! Maybe they aren’t really bad people trying to torture everyone in FIRST after all. I’ve never met anyone so eager to share their knowledge with their competitors. Very strange. Never seen anything like this. For the first time I am completely confused by what I am doing in this program. On the plus side, Dean Kamen’s house was pretty impressive. He must be very rich.

January 7th, 2001, 6:00AM EST

We were waiting in the hotel lobby for our shuttle, and we heard someone running down the lobby from behind. There came Joe J. rushing with his luggage and bags toward the door trying to catch his shuttle. He must’ve missed it because he came back right away. Words were exchanged with the hotel front desk; calls to the shuttle company were made from the courtesy phone, and after a while, a new shuttle arrived. And off he went rushing to the airport, not knowing if he missed his flight, not knowing if his car was still there, and has a robot to build in the next 6 weeks. I hope he don’t get too stressed out.


Since my first close encounter of the third kind with Dr. Joseph M. Johnson, I’ve had many more brief meetings with him at various competitions in the years of my venture in the FIRST wonderland. He has been a teacher, engineer, mentor, cheer leader, role model, family man, hero, coach, gambler, Mountain-Dew-aholic, Ooga man, a giant, and a legend to me. I owe a lot of my knowledge and experience to Joe J. I was inspired by his CD forum posts, his technical white papers, the casual e-mail exchanges, book recommendations, the brief but important chat at IRI 2004, and his talent show performance, plus many more.

Dr. Joe, I can’t thank you enough for all the things you’ve given me in the past. There’s no way I can ever repay you completely, so I will do the only thing I can think of: inspire future students the way you inspired me.

You once told me changing the culture is like fighting a battle. I intend to fight in that battle and make a better future for the generations to come, just like what you’ve been doing since your calling to this program.


Thank you for everything you’ve done.

-Ken Leung