John Campbell’s Adventures Around the World
John
Campbell of Austin started his professional career on a high note. “My actual first job was at the White House,” says John. He went there after graduating from Tulane with degrees in Biology and Sociology. A professor helped him get a job as part of a panel to research global hunger and health. “And then there was the International Year of the Child in 1979,” says John, “when I was asked to create a presidential commission on the issues of children.”
Still in his twenties, he got a job with the United Nations. “So much of this is just out of the blue. My father told me just before he died to do something to make the world a better place. Those words set the course for my life and I’ve tried to do that. He experienced some genuine horror. He was a prisoner of war for three years during World War Two and toured Nagasaki after the bomb was dropped on that city.”
John spent thirty years with The National Academy of Sciences. “I organized international conferences on various topics in Istanbul, New Delhi, Tokyo and places like that.”
He had tea with the emperor and empress of Japan. “They were exceedingly genuine and wonderful people and I had a good visit with them over tea. Months later I ran into them at a meeting. They were in a line greeting guests and when the empress saw me she walked over to me, grabbed my hand and said, ‘Oh, Mr. Campbell we’re so excited to see you again. How was your trip to Kyoto?’ Everybody around me just stared at me and wondered how I knew the empress.”
Once he rode around Tiananmen Square in Beijing in a car that had a special license plate. “The police could not stop the driver for any infraction apparently. He floored the car and drove as fast as he could through all the back streets. When we got to Tiananmen Square he illegally just barreled through the barricades and drove around while
Cher was blasting from the CD player. He put the winnows down and just entertained whoever was around during this wild ride. I’ll never forget that night.”
John is a certified world traveler. Once he was detained at the airport in Frankfurt when they looked at his passport and discovered he had been to several countries in a short amount of time. “A young officer made me take off my shirt and shoes and he did a body search. About an hour later they released me after being convinced I was not a terrorist. ”
John has had an incredible life and met some significant people. In 1990 he arranged a meeting of world leaders to discuss the future. He says it would be hard to do that today.
He came to Texas to work with a blue ribbon committee to study the status of universities in the state. Retired now, he recently spent a few months going through his photos and journals and produced a book for his family and friends titled OFFBEAT TALES. He finished the book on his seventyfifth birthday.