About The Author 

 

Excerpt from BOMBSHELL LIBERATION

 

Leo Dailey, also known as William Leonard Johnson, has been writing poetry since his high school years in the early 1970s.

His interest in the literary arts was fueled with encouragement by his close friend and mentor, Dr. John Summersette (English PhD, Stanford University, died 1985). Johnson took several courses from Summersette, who was chairman of the English/Journalism Department at Merritt Junior College in Oakland, CA, in the mid-1970s. Johnson kept up his college studies while he also served in the U.S. Navy as a hospital corpsman. It was at Oak Knoll Naval Regional Medical Center in Oakland where Johnson worked and where – through the college’s extension program offered to hospital personnel – he took his first college level English class from Summersette, who to this day continues to be a strong influence in Johnson’s literary endeavors.

After being honorably discharged from the Navy in 1976, Johnson decided to turn his academic studies to journalism, even though he did so against Summersette’s advice. Summersette, so close a friend that he once referred to himself as being Johnson’s first “black father,” told Johnson his potential lays in his creative writing abilities. Summersette further warned Johnson that the creativity of the literary arts is diametrically opposed to the harsh realism and rigidity of the journalism field. Nevertheless, Johnson earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism in 1979 from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

While a student at UNM, Johnson contributed news articles and feature photographs to the New Mexico Daily Lobo, the campus newspaper. His coverage included the police, Public Interest Research Group and the cultural (Native American, Black and Chicano studies) beats. Although Johnson’s major area of study was in broadcast journalism, he would find himself working mostly for print media.

Johnson’s professional writing career began while serving as a Volunteer In Service To America (VISTA) in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District from 1980 to 1981. Along with established Bay Area poet Ron Silliman, Johnson co-edited the Tenderloin Times, a bi-monthly community newspaper published by Hospitality House, a United Way Agency in the heart of downtown.

While Johnson’s role was community instigator and watchdog, Silliman conducted poetry workshops and published many of the poetic works of local residents in the newspaper. Johnson’s published work included an ironic piece, “Tenderloin clean-up? Police sweep streets,” in which police officers frequently abused enforcement of a sidewalk obstruction law and arrested – in front of Johnson’s nose – a fellow worker hired by the Mayor’s Office. Will Courtney was a street worker whose job it was to get runaway youths, some who were prostitutes, off the streets into decent housing and to train them for jobs. Police arrested dozens of residents every day for merely standing on sidewalks outside their homes, or rather, old World Exposition hotels built in the 1930s.

Another published work by Johnson in the highly transient neighborhood was a rent survey of the old residential, single-room occupancy hotels, in which Johnson inadvertently uncovered housing discrimination. He had sent a black man, a fellow VISTA volunteer named Bill, to do the survey in which five hotels denied him housing based on his color. About 20 minutes later, these same five hotels offered the “no vacancy for blacks” rooms for rent to a white man named Ed, another community volunteer sent by Johnson. The allegations resulted in $1,000 fines imposed by the Human Rights Commission against each hotel participating in racial housing discrimination practices.

Johnson often reported violators of the city’s housing and rent laws and was effective in mobilizing residents to action through his journalistic efforts. But eventually, President Reagan’s new administration in 1981 would put a halt to the federally mandated domestic program (VISTA) in the Bay Area. So Johnson packed his bags and returned to New Mexico, where he did most of his growing up.

In early 1982, Neil R. Baird Sr. hired Johnson as associate editor of the Sierra County Sentinel, a weekly newspaper in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, and as associate news director of Baird’s radio station, KCHS-1400 AM. Johnson covered the city, county, police, courts and school beats, often working more than 60 hours weekly in the desert resort community, which houses the state’s largest lake, Elephant Butte, and plenty of snake pits.

Johnson’s most notable work there was a five-part weekly series on the extensive and irregular spending habits of Sierra County officials. At any rate, a county of about 10,000 people couldn’t afford such things as building better roads or jails, never mind hunting trips the officials took to Alaska or side trips to Billy Carter’s Shell Service Station about 2,000 miles away in Plains, Georgia. Neither could the district attorney afford to prosecute such cases. Even so, Johnson’s articles contributed to the unseating of two incumbent officials in their re-election bids, never mind evoke the deposed county manager to threaten Johnson and Boss Baird with a $13 million lawsuit in front of Albuquerque’s TV news cameras.

In October 1983, Johnson was hired as police beat reporter for the Las Cruces Sun-News, a daily newspaper in agricultural Dona Ana County. Besides covering crime and mayhem, Johnson was the Saturday reporter for Sunday’s paper, so, his collections include a wide variety of journalese. His favorite feature was about wild burros that took over the abandoned Radium Springs Resort Hotel and former prison for women. Other works were used statewide and regionally by the Associated Press.

After nearly two years at the daily, Johnson quit the Sun-News in September 1985 and returned to Albuquerque for a year. It was during this time that Johnson compiled his poetry into his first book, Bombshell Liberation. He got a copyright for his unpublished work in 1986 and even submitted an edited version to a vanity press in New York, but his friend attorney, Tom Chism, noticed that the contract terms were shoddy for the author. As a result, the thought of publishing this book would not come until two decades later.

It was a year of transformation for Johnson – and it was then that he realized what Summersette was trying to tell him about journalism versus creative writing careers. But in truth, Johnson admits now that both fields seem to compliment each other, like opposites attract - reality versus the imaginary. But in this case, the tools he would learn not only as a journalist but also as a publisher would enable him to catapult his creative spark into a realistic project.

In 1986, when the desire to publish his book of poetry quietly faded into oblivion, Johnson returned to his old job as editor and news director of the Sentinel and KCHS in Truth or Consequences. He would remain at this job for the next nine years but after his third year he met his wife Teresa Carole Cassidy. The Sentinel hired Teresa to front the office, but eventually she would get deeper and deeper into the business, doing almost everything from ad layout to managing payroll.

Neil Baird, also an ordained Baptist minister, married Bill and Teresa on Nov. 4, 1989, in Truth or Consequences. Neil died a few years later and on Sept. 15, 1995, Bill and Teresa started up their own weekly newspaper, the Desert Journal, and published nearly 400 issues. In May 2001 Bill also established Desert Journal Online on the Internet and he continues to operate it to promote and sell his poetry and true crime books. During more than seven and a half years of operation, the Desert Journal won 34 awards from the New Mexico Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contests from 1997 to 2003, including best website for the years 2002 and 2003.

Then tragedy struck the Johnson household in June 2004. Daughter Gina died at age 21 from sepsis syndrome – an infection that spread throughout her internal organs – and left Bill and Teresa three children to raise. The family now resides in Albuquerque.

It was true that in the long run, as Dr. Summersette had warned years before, the world of high-pressured journalism would take its toll on Johnson in many ways, mainly his health. But during his stay in Albuquerque, Johnson has managed to swim his way back to health and as a state champion swimmer he has qualified for national competition. During his news media work, Johnson continued to write lyrics and poetry.

Johnson’s life has been at times stormy and much of his poetry reflects turmoil and his desire to meet challenges and overcome obstacles. His works reflect change, liberation and overall compassion for humanity’s sake. He is an advocate for peace and has written numerous editorials against the Iraq war. He also has questioned the authority of the police state and the unchecked powers of the military industrial complex, themes that are apparent throughout Bombshell Liberation.

 

In October 2007 Johnson wrote an anti-war song, "rallytime," and produced a home video for public viewing on YouTube.com.  "You don't have to be brilliant to notice that the Iraq war is just a profiteering venture of the multi-trillion dollar war machine,  all at the expense of our military service men and women and of the Iraqi people," Dailey-Johnson said.  "Our resources should be used to focus on healing and reparation, not on death and destruction.  Do you think Jesus would have launched his rockets at innocent men, women and children?  Do our leaders think they're exempt from God's first commandment - Thou shall not kill?  If God created us in his image, then it is His creative impulse that he instilled in us to create goodness, not murder our neighbors."

 Introduction by Leo Dailey

 

Excerpt from INTERFERENCE

I chose my pseudonym, Leo Dailey, for my poetic and photographic works for the simple reason that I want to honor my mother’s family, the Dailey’s, especially since they have been fighting for truth and justice for a very long time. Leo is short for my middle name, Leonard.

As William Leonard Johnson, or more publicly known as Bill Johnson (sometimes called “Wild Bill” by my friends), I have accomplished my dreams as a lifelong working journalist, starting as cub reporter in the late 1970s and ending as editor & publisher of my own newspaper and website. Although the Desert Journal weekly rag no longer exists, I still operate Desert Journal Online, mainly to promote and sell my first book of the true crime genre, Satan’s Den Exposed – The David Parker Ray Story, and also to have a place to list all of my subsequent books that I may author, edit, and/or publish. I also share thousands of news archives and photographs on my website.

Interference, as my second book is titled, is an offshoot of my other book, Bombshell Liberation, which is being released at the same time. While Bombshell Liberation celebrates peace and cheers on the anti-war movement, Interference is about how truth, love and justice defy and overcome evil, tyranny and oppression.

Interference, as well as Bombshell Liberation, bridges the gap between my harsh side dealing in the realm of journalistic reality with matters of truth, justice and liberty, and my soft side, which focuses primarily on the same realities but with an artistic, creative eye.

I like to think truth can become an artistic expression; that it indeed might have a chance in a diverse market place that is too often controlled by big business interests. But as I have acknowledged every now and then: truth without love is a crashing cymbal. The fact is truth cannot come into existence if not sparked by the divine. If it’s true that Satan is the father of all lies, then perhaps it might also be true that The Great Spirit – The Creator - is the mother of all truths.

Leo Dailey

 Readers' Comments

Thanks so much for your poetry links... your work is great. I hope you have tons of sales!

Motavenda "Moti" Melchizedek
Silver City, NM