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Motivational Speaker on the theme of empowering society and
churches on creative ways to promote good health by preventing kids and
youth from becoming tobacco addicts.
Mike Sawyer a former professional gambler,
night club and bar owner, assistant personnel manager with Kellogg Brown &
Root, Inc. (Halliburton), youth pastor, and mayor.
Sawyer at age 17 took the Career Placement
Test at Auburn University and his two highest ranked careers #1. Ministry
#2. Health and Physical Education.
Regretfully, Sawyer didn't let his heart
takeover until age 30, when he walked away from a very lucrative alcohol
business that he created to become active in building outreach
ministries to kids and youth with two local Southeast Alabama churches.
It was on the church bus that his passion to
attack tobacco and smoking was lit one Wednesday night in November of
1986, when he asked Connie a beautiful 9th grader (her dad was in an
Alabama prison at that time), what the most tempting thing was at high
school, immediately, "Smoking," was her soft and sincere answer. In less
than four months Sawyer was able to encourage the school board to oust all
tobacco privileges in Connie's school district.
Two United Methodist Churches in Kentucky
tossed Sawyer out of this pulpit seven days after preaching "Tobacco
Kills," sermon in November of 1989.
Jay Leno joked about Sawyer's kid's baseball
team name "Smoking Kills" in 1998, Paul Harvey reported about this team
name on his radio show in 1998, and Rush Limbaugh committed his entire
National Radio Commentary about Sawyer and Smoking Kills in 1998, and
chose to rerun in 1999.
Sawyer was invited by the American Medical
Association to speak on the theme of creative ways of fighting tobacco
at The 11th World Conference on Tobacco or Health held in Chicago August
6-10, 2000.
October 1999, Mike Sawyer gets a letter from
Dr. Michael P. Eriksen, Sc. D. Director Office on Smoking and Health that
the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
would be sharing his creative ideals to promote health with tobacco
control contacts in all 50 states.
Sawyer's innovative way of employing the
homeless and promoting public health was covered locally and nationally in
2003. Greg Kocher staff reporter with the Pulitzer Prize winning
Herald-Leader newspaper of Lexington, Kentucky called Sawyer a zealot.
The Pentecostal Evangel weekly magazine of
the Assemblies of God Church with over 250,000 publication featured
Sawyer's "I Will Never Use Tobacco," in June of 2003.
Sawyer has addressed the elected city
governments of Selma, Alabama and Panama City Beach, Florida on promoting
public health in 2003 and 2004.
April 17, 2004 Sawyer publicly displayed his
"I Will Never Use Tobacco," and Tobacco Death material at the historical
Five Points West intersection and predominately African American
neighborhood in Birmingham, Alabama.
Sawyer fatherless by smoking and tobacco at
eleven-years-old. His father died with emphysema caused by his Winston
addiction.