Meet Danny Brock
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Age: 47 |
A Youth Exchange student from Japan proves to a close-knit Utah family that a simple hug can work magic.
By Alan Steinberg
The Rotarian
12 May 2004
Rotary entered Danny Brock's life by making him an offer he simply couldn't refuse.
In 1988, members of the Rotary Club of Bountiful, Utah, USA, recruited Brock, then a 30-year-old Boy Scout leader and co-owner of a skylight manufacturing company, to join a Group Study Exchange (GSE) team bound for Scotland. Six weeks later, Brock filed an impassioned trip report that captured the essence of GSE: promoting goodwill by exposing young professionals to different cultures. His report prompted the District 5420 governor to invite him to join the nearby Rotary Club of Centerville-Farmington and to offer him a seat on the district's GSE committee, a prestigious appointment for someone so young. (Not surprisingly, at age 44, he would become the third-youngest district governor for Rotary year 2001-02. He's now a member of the Rotary Club of Salt Lake City.)
"Before that Scotland trip," Brock says, "I thought Rotary was out of my league. I thought it was reserved for the McDonnells and Douglases."
The reference resonates from his childhood in Huntington Beach, Calif., near Long Beach, where his father built airplanes for McDonnell-Douglas Aircraft. "Dad's a premier giver," he says. "Since he knew Rotary was the premier service club, he always wanted to join." But, Brock says, the local clubs never seemed to have any vacancies, "so when Rotary asked me to join, I did it, in a way, for my dad."
But even though his father, Charlie, was never a Rotarian, he still would play a major role in a family experience that demonstrated, as Brock puts it, "Rotary's phenomenal power to change people's lives."
In 1991, Brock and his wife, Kelly, a labor and delivery nurse, volunteered to host a 17-year-old Rotary Youth Exchange student from Japan. But there was one potential problem.
Charlie Brock had been drafted into the U.S. Army immediately after Japanese warplanes attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, plunging the United States into World War II. Two years later, as a member of the U.S. Army's 81st "Wildcat" Infantry Division, he was huddled on a landing craft headed toward the South Pacific island of Angar. They were to occupy the island and build an airstrip. When his outfit hit the sand, 250 soldiers piled out, believing the island to be abandoned. As they advanced inland, they found phosphorous mines carved into the hills. Suddenly, a dozen flatbed railroad cars emerged from the mine entrances, each carrying Japanese soldiers firing heavy machine guns. Under withering fire, Charlie Brock hauled wounded comrades one at a time back to the beach until he finally collapsed from his own injuries.
Only later did he learn he was one of the few survivors. His actions earned him a Bronze Star for bravery and three Purple Hearts for his wounds. But his emotional scars would linger much longer.
"Fast-forward to 1991," says Brock, "and me telling my folks: 'We're hosting a Japanese boy.' My dad said, 'He will never set foot in my house.'
"I never knew this man to say an unkind word about anyone, so I was stunned," Brock admits. But he also understood, recalling the many times his father would wake up screaming from nightmares of the war. For the elder Brock, the Japanese were "the enemy," and he made sure the family never owned Japanese-made cars, electronics, or other products.
"And here I was asking him to welcome a Japanese boy into his home," says Brock. "I told him this kid didn't know anything about that war, but he wouldn't budge." On the day the student was to arrive, Brock gave it one more try, asking his father if he realized that unless he changed his mind, the student would spend his entire time in Utah without ever setting foot in the home of his host family's parents.
At that, Brock says, his father paused and said: "'Son, bring him over. Don't
stop at your home, don't stop at the store; bring him right here. I want to see
him.'"
"I was dumbfounded," Brock says.
Brock describes the student, Hoyu Shimamura, as a "wonderful boy" who had been taught that American family members hug each other and call grandparents Grandma and Grandpa. Sure enough, when Brock and his wife arrived with Hoyu, the youth immediately greeted Brock's parents with big hugs and cries of "Grandpa! Grandma!"
Brock and his wife braced themselves for his parents' reaction. "And then my dad said calmly, 'Okay, let's eat,'" Brock recalls. "I watched my parents walk -- with Hoyu between them -- into the kitchen. Kelly started sobbing and I almost lost it. I always prayed that my dad would find peace someday -- and here's this Japanese boy bringing him that peace. I asked my dad later that day why he relented, and he said he was tired of the hate and anger he'd carried all these years."
Brock remembers his wife asking him if he grasped "what just happened here because of Rotary?"
Hoyu stayed with the Brocks for five months -- and Charlie Brock hasn't had a nightmare since. "I don't think thousands of dollars worth of psychological help could've worked this magic," Brock surmises. "Here this loving kid from Japan shows up and, in an instant, heals a wound of 50 years and changes my family's entire life?"
Attributing the "magic" to Rotary, Brock and his wife seized service opportunities with renewed vigor. For example, Kelly, now a member of the Centerville-Farmington club, has visited Africa three times on Rotary projects. She is most committed to the Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, run by Australian surgeon Catherine Hamlin. The facility treats young mothers -- many in their early teens -- who develop obstetric fistula, an injury in which the fetus tears a hole in the birth canal, often causing chronic incontinence. Even though it's a condition linked to poor prenatal care and the young age of the mothers, such women are stigmatized and often abandoned by their husbands and families. Fortunately, a relatively simple surgical procedure can repair the damage, and the women can return to normal lives. Dr. Hamlin's surgical team helps more than 1,000 women each year.
When Kelly Brock returned home, she began making quilts for Dr. Hamlin to give each patient as a gift. Their basement bedroom is now "floor-to-ceiling quilts," Brock says. She also sent information about Dr. Hamlin to the "Oprah" show, and host Oprah Winfrey eventually booked the surgeon as a guest. Kelly speaks frequently in public about her trip, and she comes home from each presentation with hundreds of dollars in donations for the hospital.
Then there's their daughter, Molly, 25. Since Hoyu's stay, the Brocks have hosted two Youth Exchange students from Mexico, one from the Netherlands, and another from Brazil. In 1997, Molly decided she wanted the same experience. The 17-year-old Mormon girl from Bountiful High School spent her senior year at a Catholic high school in Mazatlan, Mexico, as a Youth Exchange student. Struggling with Spanish, Molly went to a local beach one day to relax by practicing gymnastics. A classmate saw her and, impressed by her skills, told the principal, who urged Molly to join the cheerleading team. In return for Spanish tutoring, Molly taught them gymnastics. Her father recalls proudly that the squad went on to win the national cheerleading championship in Acapulco.
"It would've never happened if we hadn't hosted all those exchange students over the years," he says. "My kids all considered it normal to have strangers from around the world in their home."
Last year, the Brocks' youngest son, Joe, 17, spent two weeks rebuilding washrooms and installing fencing at the Ngala School for the Deaf in Kenya as part of YouthLINC, a volunteer service program for teenagers supported by Utah Rotary clubs. Joe was deeply affected by the poverty he witnessed. "He came home and said things like, 'We have too much,'" Brock says. "He saw kids in his school cafeteria leaving food and said, 'You're not finishing that?' The Rotary trip was formative for him; the lessons he learned about life and himself are lasting."
Reflecting 13 years later on the impact of Hoyu's visit, Brock says: "Rotary talks about Service Above Self. But Hoyu's service happened without him even knowing it. I learned an invaluable lesson that day: You never know what can happen if you just show up. And Rotary is all about showing up, isn't it? Showing up for meetings, for projects, for service, to help someone else. And somehow the world is improved wherever Rotarians leave their mark. After my dad hugged Hoyu that day, I told Kelly, 'You know what? I will always be a Rotarian. I will always serve. I will always give.'"
Alan Steinberg profiled Kathleen Cattrall in the April issue of The Rotarian. This article originally appeared in the May 2004 issue of The Rotarian.
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