The do-gooder: St. George man works to fulfill promise, helps in Haiti — and gains perspective

In a tiny Haitian village known oddly as Batay 39, a Tennessee doctor ducked into a dirt-floor hut to help a woman in labor while Jeremy Johnson waited outside.

Johnson, a wealthy St. George businessman, was at the village that January morning as part of his quest to deliver relief to suffering Haitians, but being squeamish, he had a hard time making eye contact with the agony he saw all around him.

His friends were in Haiti, too, elbow-deep in beans, smelling death, confronting the stark difference of their lives to the people around them. It was comforting to have them there.

Together, they felt the catharsis of all-consuming charity, like being baptized and forgiven in a conversion to helping humanity. Helping Haiti.

So as Johnson and his friends followed Tennessee cardiologist Clint Doiron through the muddy village, past pigs, turkeys, goats and smoldering charcoal pits where sticks were blackened and sold across the lake as fuel, they listened to the doctor's hard sell to raise $1.2 million for a pediatric clinic.

"I'm an expensive guy," Doiron said at one point.

"We're a couple of expensive guys, too," replied Nathan Kinsella, one of Johnson's longtime buddies.

Johnson did not agree to front the money on the spot, but Doiron still sees him as a godsend.

"He's an angel from heaven," he said. "We needed help, and he was there."

It's no big deal, Johnson would say. But his actions — generous, daring and audacious — are unusual at best. Forty-eight hours after a Jan. 12 earthquake devastated Haiti, the 34-year-old — who'd never before set foot in the country — gathered a handful of people, bulletproof vests and $150,000 in cash, then flew his private jet to the violent chaos of the disaster's aftermath. He hefted stolen bags of food onto his helicopters from untouched emergency rations and challenged his friends to fight the crowds to make sure the women and children could eat, too.

He hardly ate during the 11-day mission — hardly slept. But a week after he came home from the trip to his wife and two daughters, he couldn't resist going back again, and again. For him, this was a penance — and a reward.