It was showtime, and few in the packed theater in the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Herndon, VA, were as anxious for the performance to begin as Johnny Martin. If there was a flaw in the work of the retired Air Force Lt. Colonel, the weeks of practice by the actors, singers and musicians would be ruined.

Col. Martin was more than a behind-the-scenes player in this pageant at the 3,000-member church. The electrical engineer had volunteered to design and install a modern, multi-faceted, digital media system for delivering the Word in a variety of venues.

On this occasion, Martin said, “One of the members wrote a play, and the production had 12 actors, each with his own wireless microphone, and a choir with three mikes on them, a soloist, a band with a couple of horns and a bass guitar, two keyboards, and an organ.

“So we went to a digital mixing board, and I ran new wiring and caballing for all the mikes, and we had three cameras to make a video. The play was a major production for us.”

Not surprisingly, the play went well, and the system worked flawlessly. But that would be expected of a man who spent 23 years developing the technical parameters for the military’s communications satellite networks, and led the testing for the GPS systems for the F-16 fighter. After retiring from the Air Force in 2004, he joined Booz Allen Hamilton as a systems engineer, developing the architecture for future military satellite systems.

But essentially Martin – like many of the Black Engineer of the Year winners – has had two careers simultaneously: a professional one paying a salary, and a social one gratifying their soul. They have pumped the same drive that propelled them to the forefront of technological achievement in to other time consuming, but personally satisfying pursuits.

For Martin, at every place he has been stationed, he worked in a Baptist church, usually using his engineering skills to develop audio and visual aid systems to broaden the church’s outreach capabilities.

Though during periodic nor’easters in which blizzards made the roads impassable to most cars, Martin was known to take his Nissan Titan 4X4 King Cab, and transport workers to and from the Southern Maryland Hospital Center.

“I’ve been involved in church all my life,” said Martin. “For all the sins that I do, I can say I’m doing something good when I stand up before the Lord. We don’t believe good works get you into Heaven, but it’s nice to have something on that side of the ledger.”

His sentiment would be shared by Lewis L. Cole, Jr., who makes his living overseeing the production of more than 700,000 cars as Vehicle Line Director for General Motors – but who spends an equal amount of time in local, regional, and national Presbyterian Church affairs.

Cole has been active in the church for decades, starting as a young president of the junior usher board in St. Paul Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Detroit, serving on church committees, teaching, and then heading, the Sunday School, and eventually being elected to the position of Elder in the church. In that position, he represented the church in the local Presbytery, was elected by his fellow representatives to the regional Synod, and elected again by that body to the National Assembly of the Presbyterian Church.

“I was involved in the life of the church significantly long before I even thought of becoming an engineer,” said Cole, who also works as a husband and father of four. “I enjoyed the work I did, and was motivated and inspired, so the responsibilities just grew over time.

“It was not something I ever planned, and I did not seek any of these positions. But I like church activities. The work lends itself to helping others, and I can try to inspire young people to go in the right direction. I speak to them about the importance of education, and how math, science and technology contribute to benefit the world.”

Working with children, in groups and individually, has occupied the time of other Black Engineer of the Year winners.

When software engineer Dorothy Rice Williams is not at The Boeing Company designing avionics for the F-18 fighter, she can usually be found with students from elementary through college, teaching or mentoring.

“I love working with kids,” Williams said. “I just take to kids. I’m their mentor. In college I worked in the Upward Bound program for disadvantaged kids, teaching them mathematics and science.”

She volunteers time in the Science in Everyday Experience program in St. Louis, providing homework help in math and science, and helping students develop science projects. She also spends time as a volunteer at the Muscular Dystrophy Association, helping kids believe they can succeed despite their medical conditions.

For Joyce Dawkins, fulfillment is found by working with teenagers who society has already tagged as ‘losers’. Dawkins, who spent 21 years designing and managing secure communications systems for the Navy before joining EDS as an IT consultant, spends her down time with 13 to 18-year olds confined to the Rappahannock Juvenile Center.

“Growing up in one of the most socially deprived neighborhoods in Augusta,” she recalls, “I didn’t see a lot of people like me succeeding.

But I always had positive role models in school, who said you can do what you want. There were always people in my life who gave to me.
“What I learned is that it is always important to go back and give to your community. There are kids who will see you as a superstar, and believe if they can touch somebody who looks like them and acts like them, then maybe they can succeed, too.”

As a single parent, she once took her young son with her to join a group of volunteers picking up trash in a Washington, DC neighborhood, and he asked why they were cleaning up, instead of the people who lived there.

“I said to him that in those houses there are babies and little kids who can’t do for themselves,” she said, “and we are lending them a hand. I taught him there is a need to help others who can’t always help themselves.”

Her work in the juvenile center can, at times, be emotionally difficult. She works with children who are incarcerated for a variety of reasons, ranging from unsafe family environments to homicide.

“The first challenge is just showing up,” she said. “If you keep showing up, the barriers go down, because you show them that they are worth something to you. You show they are valued in life and can change their futures, if they change their mindset and believe they are valued.

“Listening to the hopelessness of some of these kids makes me more committed to being there and working with them. You never know how you may have touched someone’s life, till they come to you later and say you planted this seed in me, and I want to show you what I am today.  I just say to God, be the glory.”

For Earl Nicks, who developed the AWACS radar system for the Air Force, and now develops avionics and in-flight entertainment systems for commercial aircraft for ARINC, the adult workday is balanced with the laughter of kids.

Nicks has coached little league basketball and baseball for more than a decade, saying “That’s my love and joy, working with little kids, especially the ten to 12-year-olds. That’s the best time of my life.”

He got involved, first as an assistant coach, when his son was four years old and wanted to play little league baseball. “My knowledge of baseball was limited,” Nicks said, “but if he was going to do it, I was going to be involved.”

He found it enjoyed coaching, teaching kids to work together, to plan and struggle, acknowledge victory as something earned, and accept defeat as the starting point for the next hard earned win.

Nicks also makes time to tutor high school students in math, and serve meals every Sunday to families in shelters for the homeless and shelters for battered women. “I talk to them some,” he said, “but mostly I just listen, and give them a sounding board and someone to talk to. I get a lot of satisfaction from that.”

When he is not developing NASA flight software for Northrop Grumman Corp., Robert K. Auten’s world revolves around his daughter. She was a young teenager when his wife walked out, refusing further contact with her child, and leaving the single father to raise a child with a learning disability.

“I had her tested,” Auten said. “She had above average verbal skills, but her processing skills were slow, and she had a difficult time in math, for example.

“It was the most challenging thing I ever did,” Auten said. “I used to listen to women talking about how hard it was being a single parent, and I felt it was just complaining. But it was the hardest job I ever had.”

The problem, he realized, wasn’t his daughter’s disability; it was her fear of rejection, combined with teenage insecurity. “She said she isn’t worth anything,” Auten recalled, “and nobody loves her. I told her I would never leave her, and never reject her.  It took a while for her to see that.”

She is a college graduate now, and “I’m really proud of her. She is a good kid.”

Renee Arrington-Johnson knows something about dealing with disabilities. During the day, she is lead engineer for General Motors, benchmarking assembly plant management worldwide. She is also legally blind.

Arrington-Johnson was born with retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative disease in which peripheral vision dwindles until nearly all sight is gone. At age five, she recalled, she was told she would never drive a car or play sports. She would trip over objects on the floor, or walk into walls, since she had, essentially, tunnel vision. But she refused to accept what was considered inevitable.

“I was told when I was 13 I should go to the Society for the Blind, and get a job where I didn’t need eyesight,” Arrington-Johnson said. “But that was contrary to my nature. I played volleyball, softball and field hockey in school. I wasn’t very good in softball, but in field hockey I played in positions where less peripheral vision was required.

“I didn’t want to face this as a limiting thing, because my parents never put limits on me.”

Thirty years later, in addition to her engineering role, she helps lead GM’s disability affinity group, bringing both awareness of disability issues to engineers, designers and managers, and helping with mentoring and retaining other employees with disabilities. 

“There are door handles which are easier to open for people with arthritis,” she said “and small but important changes in décor. If you have plush carpets, you make it difficult for a person in a wheelchair, or someone using a cane. If you make the carpet denser, you not only make it easier for the disabled person, but it is easier for people without disabilities who are rolling their computer on a luggage carrier.”

Her mentoring program at GM extends beyond the company property to include high school students with disabilities. They are paired with Arrington-Johnson and other disabled GM professionals, so they can be assured they can have a real future.

Jeremy Harrison also played sports as a kid – and never stopped.
During the day, Harrison has made a living at the Lockheed Martin Corp. integrating the disparate missile defense systems of the different military branches. It is his work which makes a cohesive, seamless missile defense system possible.

But when he is not, as he says, “playing kindergarten teacher for different technical programs,” he is working out in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, playing in an adult soccer league, or customizing and racing motorcycles.

“If I’m not healthy,” Harrison explained, “I can’t take care of myself, I can’t work, can’t take care of my family. So I play in the soccer league twice a week, and started taking jiu-jitsu to supplement my regular workouts.

“It’s good conditioning, and it’s fun.”

Darryl A. Stokes grew up on Baltimore’s West side, oblivious to the numerous dedicated non-profit organizations working to improve the quality of life for the area’s underprivileged residents. “There was as organization called the Lafayette Community Center, where there were basic services for mothers, food and nutritional meals for babies, and day care services. There were things you took for granted growing up.”

As manager of substations for Constellation Energy, Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. which serves some two million gas and electric customers, Stokes has spent the last 20 years supporting neighborhood organizations like Lafayette. 

“Early in my career,” he said, “I was a loaned executive for a year to the United Way, and that gave me an appreciation for non-profits in my neighborhood, and around the city.”

He spent six years on the board of the Howard County Community Foundation, a sprinkle organization providing funds to a wide variety of non-profit groups, and helped establish the Columbia Foundation, providing money to new non-profits seeking their initial funding grants.

As if that weren’t enough, he is a founding member of the Buford Drew Jemison math and science technology school, one of four new charter schools in Baltimore which will serve 450 middle school boys.

"I was very fortunate to get a quality education within the Baltimore Public School system,” Stokes said, “and I recognize there is a need for me giving back.”