On Aug. 26, ETSU held a book signing for Jocelyn Mooneyhan Lacey and her children’s book “An Angel Named Johnia.”
The book signing was held as a fundraiser, with $5 from every sale going to the Johnia Hope Berry Scholarship, awarded to a student pursuing a degree in child psychology.
Johnia Hope Berry was an ETSU and Sigma Kappa alumna who had a passion for helping children in need. Hoping to turn this passion into a career, she majored in child psychology and graduated from ETSU with dreams of earning her master’s degree at the University of Tennessee. Johnia was killed by an intruder while asleep in her apartment on Dec. 6, 2004. She had been wrapping Christmas presents for children in her community earlier that night.
“You hear about these horrible things happening to people, but you never think you’re going to know them,” said Lacey. “Writing this story about her, in a way, was part of my grieving process. Even though I wrote it years later, it had always been on my mind.”
Lacey, who was Johnia’s friend at ETSU and had been her “guardian angel” in Sigma Kappa, felt a calling to share Johnia’s story. She fell into writing children’s books with a Christian perspective and is inspired by her own personal experiences. After graduating at ETSU, Lacey spent some time working for the Sigma Kappa headquarters, and it was during this time that she heard the news of her sorority sister’s passing. Upon writing the book, Lacey reached out to another fellow sorority sister, Haley McManigal, to illustrate it.
“We’re all human, and we all question why things happen—why things happen to good people,” says Lacey. “It’s basically trying to help people understand that, from a Christian perspective, this is just things that happen and how we can make something good come out of something so horrible.”
The story follows Johnia in her journey to heaven, showcasing how she goes from a feeling of incompleteness in her life’s passion to finding peace in seeing how her parents are working to help children in need by hosting toy drives in her honor.
Johnia’s parents have also pushed for a DNA act that requires anyone who is arrested to submit a DNA sample. The man responsible for Johnia’s death had previously been arrested in July 2004 and had provided a DNA sample that was later matched to the scene. Tennessee is the eighth state to pass this act, and Lacey has made it her mission to get it passed in all 50 states.
