Like Brenda Hughes, it was a compelling story that led
Dr. Johnnie Sexton to pursue his profession and his passion,
but Sexton developed his first film as a clinical tool.
He is, first and foremost, the owner and operator of a
private audiology practice in Wilmington, where for many years
he has worked with hundreds of children with varying degrees of
hearing impairment. It is a vocation born, literally, of a chance set
of circumstances.
In the early 1950s, when Sexton was still a toddler, a child, also
named Johnnie, was born across the street from where he lived in
Garland, North Carolina. The younger Johnnie was profoundly
deaf, and when, at the age of five, that Johnnie was sent to live 300
miles away at the North Carolina State School for the Deaf,
Johnnie Sexton was witness to the challenges that family
bore. Later, at college, Sexton volunteered as an intern for a
pre-school class for deaf children.
“That was all it took,” Sexton says.
He worked for years with several of the children he met
through the internship, and his career path snapped into
focus. As time went on, Sexton noticed that in addition to
the challenges for patients with hearing impairments, there
were serious challenges for their families; challenges which,
for the most part, were unaddressed.
He saw a real need to address their emotional grief journey
through a documentary film.
In 2009, Sexton began developing The CARE Project, a
global initiative which uses a film to provide support and redefine
counseling for hearing impaired patients and their families.
To make the film, he turned to friends in the film industry,
and, with cameras and audio equipment began to document the
tales of individual families, recording, with their permission, the
details of their private, emotional grief journeys.
The result — a 56-minute film entitled Journeys to
Clockwise from above: Dr. Johnnie
Sexton, founder of The CARE
Project. Photography by Harry Taylor.
Interview with Mark and Robin Hosley
for The CARE Project documentary.
Tanner Hosley. Still frames from The
CARE Project documentary. Tanner
Hosley, one of the film’s subjects,
arrives via limo to the September,
2011 premiere at the Brooklyn Arts
Center. WBM file photo. Xris Kessler,
CARE Media Director, and Sexton
discuss filming. Photography courtesy
of Johnnie Sexton.
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WBM january 2012