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Parkrose Business Association matriarch’s life marked by acts of kindness, love, devotion and fanatic support of professional hockey in general and the Portland Winter Hawks in particular
LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
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| Artie Annette Johnson May 31, 1930 - August 10, 2003 |
Obituaries customarily detail the deceased’s employment positions held, awards, accomplishments and the like, and Johnson’s were impressive enough. She was a charter member of PBA and served as its secretary from its formation in 1990 until nearly the moment of her death. The National Notary Association honored her in 1990 for, among other things, traveling to a dying person’s home at 10 p.m. to notarize a will. She was a founding member of the East Multnomah County chapter of the League of Women Voters, and its president for two years. She was a member of the Parkrose Christian Church since 1977, and taught Sunday school there for more than 20 years. The MEMO named her Volunteer of the Year in 1996, and Senior Citizen of the year in 2000.
Despite all this, she will be best remembered for how she treated people individually and personally, and the things she did with no thought of recognition or credit.
Everyone’s best friend
PBA vice-chair Wayne Stoll’s first encounter with Johnson was typical. “When I came to my first PBA meeting in 1995, the only person I knew was (former staffer) Kyle Ziegler,” he recalls. “I walk in and here’s this lady at the front desk saying, ‘Oh, hi, Wayne, so good you could come!’ You’d meet her for the first time, and within five minutes it was as if you’d known her all your life.”
“She was very understated,” longtime friend Marsha Lee says. “She stayed in the background not looking for a reward. What she did was very private, very off the record.” However, she adds, “She never missed an event. When there was a job to be done, Artie was there to do it.”
She was there for individuals, too. “She had so many friends because she knew how to be a friend,” Lee says. “Whenever you needed it, she had a gift, a bouquet, a note of encouragement, a kind word to bring your spirits up. She only saw the good, the beautiful and the lovely in people, and she made every friend feel like her best friend.”
Another friend, Carol Bash, recalls, “It was impossible to go anywhere with her because she knew everybody. She opened herself 100 percent to everyone from a restaurant waitress to (former Governor) Barbara Roberts. Some people spend their lives making money; Artie spent hers making friends.”
Further, although she was not rich, she was generous to her friends, individually and collectively. She made sure there were door prizes for PBA meetings, and sometimes purchased them with her own money. On one occasion, never before related, when the PBA held a function at a local restaurant and Johnson felt the owner hadn’t been properly compensated, she wrote out a personal check for $100.
The key, Lee says, was religion, although Johnson was never an aggressive preacher. “It all came from her deep faith in Jesus Christ,” she says. “It motivated everything she did. She spent her whole life preparing for her eternity. ”
“She was a shining star in the Parkrose Christian Church for 20 years,” Gail Bash says.
A transplanted Razorback
Born in Newport, Arkansas, Johnson accompanied her family to Portland as a teenager in 1948 when her father, a national hotel chain employee, came to Portland to help renovate a local hotel. The family later moved back to Arkansas, but not before Artie met and fell in love with railroad worker Clark Johnson. He accompanied her back east, married her in March 1949 and the following month brought her back to Portland.
Artie worked in the insurance business from 1951 until her retirement in 1992. Clark Johnson died in 1971, and Artie’s sister Julia died in 2001 after a long illness. “She cared for Julia for so many years, and she always thought it was a privilege to do it,” Lee recalls.
In what might seem like an anomaly, both sisters were devoted fans of the Portland Winter Hawks hockey team, seldom missing a home game. Artie named her pet dogs after her favorite Winter Hawk players.
Cheerful to the end
Nothing characterized Johnson’s life like her demeanor after she was diagnosed with cancer last year.
“The fact that I’m told I don’t have long to live is no reason to stop living,” she told the MEMO at the time.
“If you didn’t know she had terminal cancer you wouldn’t know from her disposition,” Stoll says. “She was still coming to meetings, still doing things for others, so sunny, so sweet.”
Last February Johnson, now sometimes too sick to care for herself, went to live with Gail and Carol Bash. “She loved having a family around her again, but she didn’t want to inconvenience us,” Carol says. “She was considerate to a fault,” Gail says. She suffered in silence for months while a wind chime outside her window kept her awake before finally bringing it to anyone’s attention. “She taught us a lot about how to handle yourself in a tragic situation,” he says.
“We never heard her feel sorry for herself,” Carol says. “She saw this as an opportunity God gave her to reach other lives.” “She never complained,” Lee says. “Artie knew where she was going when she died, and it wasn’t bad news.”
Last year the PBA created the Artie Johnson award. Johnson was invited to write the criteria for future winners and in fact chose the first recipient. That presentation will be made at the annual PBA Dinner/Auction in December. Her own example will set a high bar for others.
“She will be sorely missed,” Stoll says.
Send remembrances to the Major Junior Hockey Education Fund of Oregon; P.O. Box 6405, Portland, OR 97228 to help defray college costs of Winter Hawks players who do not make it to the professional level. For every year played in juniors, players receive one year of university tuition.
Publisher’s note: I met Artie Johnson in 1988. Artie was a loving, caring, kind person blessed with beauty, graciousness and exquisite manners. For all of us that knew her, Artie was a model for how to live life and treat others. I am a better person for having known her. The world today is poorer without her. Artie, we love and miss you.
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