Longtime Best Friends Reunite For Great Cause

October gala chairs tout reach of faith-based LEAP Global Missions

For over 30 years, LEAP Global Missions has brought together medical professionals and young patients around the world with complex medical needs. LEAP doctors have performed more than 10,000 life-altering surgeries and procedures in countries including India, Mexico, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe.

This year, LEAP’s mission to provide free, specialized medical care inspired by the love of Christ has brought together three families who live in University Park, Preston Hollow, and Austin, and whose friendship is as old as the organization itself.

Linsey Nixon, Leigh Johnson, and Adair Webb, along with their husbands, are co-chairing LEAP’s 2024 gala, which will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 3 at the Dallas Country Club. The three have been best friends since they were in Joanne Cantwell’s fourth-grade class at University Park Elementary School.

They became so inseparable as children that the boys in their class nicknamed them “the Golden Girls,” a reference to the then-hit TV show about single women in their 50s and 60s who share a house in Miami.

Though the friends went separate ways after graduating from Highland Park High School, all three have remained close. They were Maids of Honor at each others’ weddings. Johnson and Nixon’s oldest children are six weeks apart, and Johnson’s middle daughter and Webb’s oldest son are two months apart. When Nixon visits from Austin, her friends’ children call her “Aunt Lins.” 

The three have also continued to support LEAP. Nixon’s father, retired plastic and craniofacial surgeon Dr. Craig Hobar, founded the nonprofit around the time when their friendship began. Johnson and Webb were introduced to many patients with complex medical needs who stayed in the Hobar home while recovering from surgery. 

Nixon said that her father has wanted her to chair the nonprofit’s annual gala since before the COVID-19 pandemic. It was his dream for her to organize the event with her two best friends and their husbands. 

“I know how busy everyone is. I didn’t assume that they would say yes,” Nixon said. “But when I asked them, they both quickly responded very passionately with a yes, which was so meaningful to me.”

The theme of this year’s Gala is A Journey of Hope, and the friends aim to highlight both LEAP’s history, and how the nonprofit will continue changing lives around the world in the future. 

“LEAP shows up,” Nixon said, “and is not afraid to have a presence and to make a difference.” 

That’s true even in countries that are struggling but hesitate to permit faith-based organizations to provide aid. LEAP was one of the first organizations to respond after the catastrophic 7.0 Haiti earthquake in 2010. Most recently, its medical professionals have been on the ground in Ukraine, teaching doctors how to care for victims of the Russia Ukraine war. 

Nixon said that she hopes the gala spreads the word of LEAP’s work to a younger generation who want to support an organization that follows through and fulfills its promises to donors.

“Seeing how LEAP has grown, and seeing that firsthand, has been really incredible,” Johnson said. “I would want to do everything I can to support this organization.”