[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 16950-16951]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       REVEREND JEROME R. MILTON

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Today, when the House opens for regular session, we will 
be led by visiting chaplain Reverend Jerome R. Milton. This 
extraordinary man is a friend, and he is an inspiration to me.
  To borrow from a testimonial sermon of his, Reverend Milton, as a 
very small child, was left to die with his brother and sister in a 
rundown California motel. The San Diego County

[[Page 16951]]

welfare department found them and placed them in a horrific orphanage, 
called the Hillcrest Orphanage, where abuse of all kinds imaginable and 
unimaginable were inflicted upon them. Many of the children in such 
terrible conditions committed suicide, which included his brother and 
sister. After the horrors of this orphanage, he was placed in 13 
different foster homes, where he suffered more unfathomable abuse and 
inhuman treatment.
  Finally, as Jerome says, ``God heard the cry of the lamb,'' and he 
was placed in his 14th home, that of Dadie Florence Johnson Brown. She 
could not read or write, but she was a good woman with a big heart and 
a stronger will. She took Jerome, and she said she could not imagine 
all the abuse he had been through, that it just sounded too 
unbelievable, but she looked him in the eye and said, Don't let your 
abuse be your excuse. She said, Someday, you can be a great juvenile 
judge or a case worker or something special.
  But there was a lot of rebellion and anger in the young man. He hated 
lots of people and things, and especially God. Ms. Brown would not heed 
Jerome's pleas to leave him alone. She kept praying for him every 
single day by name. She said she knew there was good in him, but prayed 
that God would not let him end up in jail or in prison, because she 
knew God could do something very special with him.
  He eventually tried the praying thing himself, but he was very 
cynical. He wanted to go to college, he wanted to be a coach, but he 
knew no one who had money. Then he found out he could run really fast, 
and he could play football really well. Though his teacher told him he 
was too black and too stupid to ever amount to anything, he proved her 
wrong when, just 4\1/2\ years later, he taught in a classroom right 
next to hers.
  As Reverend Milton says, God moved him from foster care to people 
care. This angry, black, abused, hopeless shell of a downtrodden young 
boy had God-given potential. This is what Dadie Brown saw in him. 
Before she died, she told Jerome, All you can do for me is, if you can 
do for a group of children what I've done for you, then my living will 
not have been in vain. She said, I don't have $1 million, but I hope I 
made a $1 million difference. When she died, she had raised 44 
children, giving hope to each one.
  Jerome says she led him to Jesus and that Jesus opened his heart. He 
providentially met and married Charlene Olgis, and together, they have 
nine children. Six of them were adopted through the foster care 
program. Tyler, Texas, is where two Heisman Trophy winners grew up, 
Earl Campbell and Johnny Manziel, but it is also the mission field of 
Reverend Jerome R. Milton and his wife, Charlene, and that's where 
they've invested their lives.
  He is the senior pastor of the Greater New Pleasant Hill Baptist 
Church in Tyler. He has been there for 25 years. He established the 
Dadie Florence Brown children's home for homeless mothers and abused 
children. He has been the head track and field coach at Bishop Gorman 
Catholic High School for 24 years, leading his team to 10 State track 
and field championships, and he has helped 150 athletes earn 
scholarships. He has also been the Tyler Citizen of the Year, winning 
the T.B. Butler Award. His work toward spanning race and religion and 
all types of barriers is boundless, and his list of accomplishments 
would take all day long to read.
  He has blessed our town, our district, our State, and our country. It 
is an honor and an inspiration to know him and to count him as a 
friend. I so look forward to having my friend as a visiting chaplain 
today at noon eastern time when he opens the official part of this 
session in Congress.
  God bless America, and God bless Jerome Milton.

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