Senior Spotlight: Johnny Tran

As everyone huddled in their homes because of the pandemic, Johnny Tran huddled with his mom in their living room.  

For the first time, Johnny heard his mom’s story — leaving Vietnam in 1994 with her three siblings and extended family and coming to Greensboro the day after she turned 21. After she arrived, she discovered she was one day too old to enroll in high school, which she later found limited her career opportunities. 

As they sat in their living room, Johnny’s mom talked about his bad grades at The Academy at Lincoln, and she emphasized that education is a privilege, not to be taken for granted. She told her only son, her youngest child, she didn’t have the academic opportunities in Vietnam that he can take advantage of in North Carolina. She gave Johnny a directive: Make education your top priority. 

That one conversation five years ago changed everything for Johnny. 

“When she told me her story, it rewired something in me to push harder for her,” Johnny says today. “I wanted to try hard in school again. I wanted to find enjoyment in my classes, and I was really driven to go back to church, learn how to honor my Vietnamese culture and do something worthwhile with my life.” 

Johnny has. He graduated from The Academy at Smith High and will attend UNC-Chapel Hill where he will major in nursing and pursue public health research. Because of his hard work in high school, he has received scholarships that will cover every last dollar he needs to attend UNC-Chapel Hill. 

The scholarships Johnny has earned is quite eye-opening. Yet, to read his college application essays and hear him talk, you begin to understand how far he has come. 

The Glimmer of Resilience Grows 

When he began at Archer Elementary, Johnny started taking English as a Second Language classes. He still remembers how he felt walking out of class, avoiding eye contact with his classmates, and realizing being a Vietnamese American came with many challenges. ESL, which he took for two years in pre-k and kindergarten, was one. 

“Being the only kid in ESL alienated me from my classmates, as if I was somehow ‘less’ than them,” Johnny wrote in one of his college-app essays. “Being Vietnamese wasn’t cool to them, and they underestimated the magnitude of their words that killed my self-esteem growing up.” 

Johnny began to repress his Vietnamese identity. He spoke only English to his mom and his grandparents, and he resented anything that made him feel, as he says, “too Asian.” That included participating in the youth group at his Vietnamese church, which met at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Greensboro. 

He steered clear of his Vietnamese identity, and he wanted to remain invisible to his peers. His mom worked at a local fast-food restaurant, and when the pandemic hit and his mom was out of work, Johnny’s family struggled. 

As horrible as the pandemic was for the lives lost and hope scuttled, Johnny became more resilient during this incredibly tough time in the country’s history. It started with his living room conversation with his mom.  

Then there was his grandfather. He played a huge role in Johnny’s transformation as well. 

The Courage in a Costume 

Johnny’s grandfather had a tough life.  

He worked for the South Vietnamese government and helped American soldiers fight the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. When the war ended, Johnny’s grandfather was captured. He was POW, a prisoner of war, and spent a decade in a Vietnamese jail cell. After he was released, Johnny’s grandfather came to Greensboro with his family in 1990. 

Johnny’s grandfather was a quiet, stone-faced man. He called Johnny by his Vietnamese name, San. Out of the blue, he began calling Johnny by his English name. That shocked Johnny because his grandfather hardly ever spoke English. Johnny got an even bigger shock when his grandfather took him to see a performance that means so much to Vietnamese and Vietnamese Americans.  

It involves vibrant costumes and includes dance and moves familiar in martial arts to create a symbolic performance meant to ward evil spirits, usher in good fortune, and underscore the need for strength, courage, and wisdom in their lives. 

It’s known as the Lion Dance. Since he was young, Johnny always enjoyed watching the Lion Dance. 

“My usually reserved grandpa excitedly dragged me into the ballroom as huge, vibrant lions exploded onto stage,” Johnny wrote in one of his college-app essays. “It was Lunar New Year. My eyes widened in fascination as the bellowing sound of drums overtook the room.” 

Johnny’s amazement with what he saw never dimmed, and when he got more involved in his church and at The Academy at Smith, he did something about it. And what he did transformed how he saw himself — and his culture. 

The Roots of Johnny’s Leadership  

Johnny had always helped his mom and his grandparents interpret their world in North Carolina because all three struggled with speaking English. One time, when his grandmother fell at Christmas, Johnny went with her to the emergency room and became her translator and advocate with the doctors and nurses who helped her.  

By helping his family, Johnny helped himself. He had discovered his purpose: guiding communities like his own through the confusing maze of healthcare. That’s why he liked The Academy at Smith, a magnet school that offered students a chance to study biomedical technology and health sciences. 

Shalinda Witcher, a pharmacy technician instructor with Guilford County Schools, encouraged Johnny to join The Academy’s chapter of Health Occupations Students of America, or HOSA. She was the chapter’s advisor, and she thought Johnny would be a good fit. 

Johnny joined HOSA the spring of his sophomore year. When he walked into his first meeting, he found a nearly empty room. Johnny spoke with Witcher about how to bring in new members, and together, the two of them began distributing flyers, talking with students and holding HOSA information events. 

By his junior year, Johnny was HOSA’s chapter vice president, and by his senior year, he was selected as the chapter president. He organized community outreach opportunities such as holding blood drives and collecting canned food and non-perishable items to replenish the pantry at Greensboro Urban Ministry. 

Last summer, Johnny flew to the International HOSA Conference in Houston, and he also participated last year in HOSA’s statewide leadership conference in Greensboro. At the end of his senior year, Johnny saw the impact of his hard work. Smith’s HOSA chapter grew to include 100 members. 

“To me,” Johnny says, “leadership means taking the initiative to be involved with what I’m passionate about.” 

Johnny had become more passionate about his future career in healthcare. He also became more passionate about his Vietnamese heritage. He did much.  

He began teaching Bible classes to the younger Vietnamese Americans at his church. He got more involved with his church’s youth group know n as VEYM, or Vietnamese Eucharistic Youth Movement. And he helped Vietnamese who recently immigrated to the United States adjust to their new life in North Carolina.  

Thanks to his grandfather, he also embraced his culture.  

He started recruiting members to create Greensboro’s own Lion Dance team. He called it the League of Lions. They practiced every week and began performing at least 30 times a year in North Carolina, which included a performance at a Charlotte Hornets home game. 

 Johnny helped start a Lion Dance team in Raleigh, South Carolina and Seattle. Meanwhile, the League of Lions grew to as many as 30 members. Today, Johnny says the team has about 15. 

Johnny performs the symbolic lion dance with Jimmy Nguyen, a rising senior at Southeast Guilford High. He and Jimmy disappear into a costume of a red-and-gold lion. Jimmy maneuvers the 10-pound head; Johnny works the tail. Together, they dance underneath the head and body of a lion costume covered in what looks like red fur with patches of gold sequins and big round eyes reminiscent of a rainbow. 

Johnny invited his grandfather to see him perform. That moment still resonates with him. 

“He was shocked, but I could tell he was really proud,” Johnny says. “He smiled, and that was the only time I had ever seen him smile. His background was really dark and hard, and he didn’t have much to smile about. But seeing me perform made him happy, and seeing my success showed him his sacrifices weren’t for nothing.” 

“He Saw Potential in Me” 

Johnny will come to UNC-Chapel Hill as a Carolina Covenant Scholar, a full-ride scholarship awarded to talented students from low-income families. Johnny also has received two other academic accolades worthy of any headline. 

He’s a Greenhouse Scholar, which will provide $5,000 a year as well as offer him mentor and career development opportunities. Johnny also is a Gates Scholar, which comes from the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation. Like the Greenhouse Scholar Program, the Gates Scholarship will connect Johnny with mentors and careers advisors and cover every last dollar he needs for his college education. 

Johnny applied for the Gates Scholarship in September. After going through three rounds in its selective process, which included writing essays and being interviewed over Zoom, he found out he got it through on an email he received on a Sunday in late April. 

His sister Jenny, a junior biology major at UNC-Chapel Hill, happened to be home that weekend. He told her immediately, and they both knew what they had to do: Tell their mom. She had worked her way up at a local fast food restaurant to become a morning shift manager. But that job meant she had to go to sleep early because she needed to get up at 3:30 the mornings she works to get the restaurant ready for customers. 

When Jenny and Johnny woke up their mom and told her Johnny’s good news, she cried. 

“They were tears of joy,” Johnny says. 

Johnny credits Alexander Castro, his honors world history teacher, as helping him with the scholarship applications and writing the recommendation letters he needed.  

“He saw potential in me,” Johnny says, “when I doubted myself.” 

At 18, Johnny has gained much perspective on what the scholarships mean to him and his family. 

“It honors the sacrifices my grandpa and my mother made,” he says. “They crossed an ocean to make sure we would have a better life. This shows me there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that your background should never be a burden. It’s your power, your voice. It’s unique to you, and you should use it.”