Nick Mamalakis on Johnny's leadership
"[Johnny]...inherited what was left of the G. A. Mercer Company. The bank president, Mr. Hunt said, 'now what do you want done with the residue?' And [Johnny] says, 'Mr. Hunt, what the hell is residue?' He says, 'That's what's left over.' And Johnny took his pencil out and on the back of an envelope wrote 'residue'. Johnny said...'I want to remember that word because sometime I might want to use it in some lyrics.'
Because there was forty-five thousand dollars left as residue...he gave fifteen thousand to the Crippled Children's Hospital in Atlanta...fifteen thousand to his Episcopal Bishop...and then the last fifteen thousand he gave to the Jenkins Boys' Club for the gym, which they named in honor of his father.
Johnny came to town to visit his mother and had a day extra on his schedule, so we [Nick and Walter Mercer] asked him to look at the Boys' Club. And we went in the middle of summer. The swimming pool was jumping. The basketball courts were full of boys...and he saw a bunch of activity. And he just said, 'Well, how much [do] you owe on this gym?' I said, 'Approximately, fifteen thousand dollars.' And he said, 'Mark it paid. Mark it paid'...He came down on a subsequent visit and spoke to the boys at the Boys' Club in the gym building. That was the night we dedicated it to his father.
When Johnny went into the hospital over in California for his surgery, we were having a county fair...so there was a card prepared, a three by six foot card that folded in half and all the boys from the Boys' Club...signed the 'Get Well, Johnny' card, and we mailed it over to California."
Nick Mamalakis, from his oral history interview with Chris Paton (Special Collections, Georgia State University Library) conducted on May 15th, 1997
