David Johnson announced Wednesday he will retire from his post as CEO of the Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center, a position he’s held for 14 years.

He said he will stay on until Aug. 1, 2016, in the hopes that a new mental health crisis intervention center will be breaking ground on his way out of office. The upcoming birth of a grandchild accelerated his retirement plans, he said, which include moving back to Iowa with his wife to be closer to family.

“On one hand I’m not ready, but on the other hand I’m very excited about being a grandfather,” Johnson said.

David Johnson

An Iowa native, Johnson, 63, earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Iowa and a master’s in health services administration at the University of St. Francis in Illinois. He has held the top position at Bert Nash since 2001, after serving in the same role at another mental health treatment center in Des Moines for over 20 years.

“Lawrence felt like home as soon as I came here,” Johnson said. “I will certainly miss the community, the agency and all the wonderful people I’ve had contact with over the years.”

A “robust” search for the next CEO, which Johnson will be a part of, is already in the works, according to a statement from the organization.

“David has accomplished a great deal while at Bert Nash, and we are very pleased that he will continue to lead Bert Nash for the next 17 months,” said Steve Glass, the chair of Bert Nash’s governing board.

Johnson said when he arrived at Bert Nash, its budget was “a little more than half” of the nearly $12 million it is today, and its pocketbook was emptying after losing $1.5 million in funding over the previous two years.

He was able to turn things around and grow Bert Nash’s finances, he said, with the help of a “phenomenal staff” and “outstanding community partnerships,” among them the Lawrence school district, the local housing authority, law enforcement and Lawrence Memorial Hospital.

“We have great partnerships that allow us to actually move into the community and be where people are and not just wait for them to show up at our doors,” Johnson said.

As part of a national pilot program in 2008, Bert Nash was one of the first seven sites across the country to offer a new training course called Mental Health First Aid. Johnson even testified before congressional staffers in Washington, D.C., in 2014 on the importance of giving the course federal funding and making it available nationwide, which it eventually was.

Gene Meyer, the CEO of Lawrence Memorial Hospital, said Johnson “worked tirelessly” to lobby for favorable mental health care legislation in Topeka as well.

“I’m happy for him and his family but disappointed to lose someone we worked so well with,” he said.

“He’s quite an ally,” added Dan Partridge, the director of the Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department.

Although his retirement date is now set, Johnson said he still has yet to finish what could be one of his proudest achievements: seeing a groundbreaking for a new mental health crisis intervention center.

Douglas County is currently gathering information about a two-part project that would expand its jail facility and build a new intervention center to divert prisoners to. It’s all in response to rising inmate populations and greater demand to provide mental health care services.

Douglas County Administrator Craig Weinaug has said he hopes an organization such as Bert Nash could run the facility. The organizations have engaged in preliminary talks on the matter, while no construction date or funding mechanism have been identified.

“It would certainly rank way up there in terms of filling a gap in service that’s existed for quite a while,” Johnson said.