A brief bit of information about me

Born: April 28, 1943 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Father: Mont Leatham Johnson, born April 2, 1922 in Salt Lake City. He served with the U.S. Marines in WW II and the Korean War and reached the rank of captain. He then became an educator, teaching at several different grade levels before becoming a counselor. He eventually obtained his doctorate degree from Southern California University in educational psychology; and was appointed to the faculty of Long Beach City College where taught for about 15 years. He is now retired and lives in Huntington Beach with his second wife, Betty Howlett.

Mother: Lois Slight Garrison, born March 13, 1922 in Denver, CO. She worked as a nurse her whole life and was a public school nurse for about 15 years while living in Long Beach, CA. The activity that she loved most was painting portraits, and she really did it well. In 1974 she married Arthur Ahuna and in 1975 they moved to the Centennial Valley of Wyoming. She has been there ever since. She now lives with her third husband, George Herring, on a 100-acre ranch about 5 miles south of Centennial and 35 miles southwest of Laramie, WY.

Oldest sister: Dennise Lynn. Dennise was born July 30, 1945 in Salt Lake City. She married Basil Swanson (my wife’s bother) July 10, 1964 and earned a Master’s Degree in History at Chicago University and has worked most of her life as a high school teacher. She and Basil have three children, two biological, Aaron and Jessica, and one adopted, Derek. In the late 70’s, she and her family moved to Los Alamos, NM. Dennise and Basil divorced in the winter of 2001 and she is currently splitting her time between Long Beach, CA and her mother’s ranch in Wyoming.

Youngest sister: Susan Lane. Susan was born May 7, 1947 in Salt Lake City. She completed a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts at UCLA. She has two children Nicholas Buckley and LaKiesha Johnson. She lives in Decatur, GA just outside Atlanta and has her own business that is a service to obtain building permits for construction companies.

My history. On average during my life, I have moved into a new residence every 21 months. The home that I stayed in the longest was at 3179 Petaluma Ave, Long Beach, CA. That was where I lived from 5^th grade through high school. I graduated from Robert A. Millikan HS in 1961 and I started college at UCLA in the fall of that year. On June 10, 1964, I married Vicky Swanson. We soon afterward moved to Chicago where we both attended Northwestern University and she worked full-time at A. C. Nielsen (the TV rating company). I was studying dentistry at Northwestern University, and she studied math at Northwestern Evening Division. Sabina Rene was born December 30, 1967 in Chicago shortly before I quit dental school and went back to UCLA to finish my B. A. in order to earn a Ph. D. in microbiology. I went to Southern Illinois University and completed my doctorate degree in 1974. Joseph Montgomery, our second child was born on August 3, 1975 in Austin, TX. From 1975 to 1979, I was heavily involved with the Unification Church while working first as a post-doctorate and then as assistant professor at S.I.U School of Dental Medicine in Alton, IL. September 1979 we moved to Wyoming to help mother with a ranch she had just bought and to live-out my dream of living in the country. At the time mom was married to her second husband, Arthur Ahuna, a Hawaiian want-to-be-cowboy who she met on her cruise around the world. When they met he was working on the freighter/passenger ship on which mom had taken passage.

When we got to Wyoming, we bought a used 14x70 mobile home that we had set up about 100 feet uphill from mom’s mobile home, but hers was new. We lived on what we called the “Ahuna Ranch”, that was located at the south end of Centennial Valley. This was a wonderful experience to be the owner of so much beautiful land. I got a job at the University of Wyoming as a research associate in the biochemistry department, Vicky worked at the Old Corral restaurant that was owned by mom’s bother-in-law, Pat Self, as did mom and Arthur. Sabina took to this new life like a duck to water. She had developed a love for horses early in her life. She quickly got involved with 4H and started to learn how to raise and train horses.

Then January 1981, Todd Johnson talked me into coming to New York City to work with him on behalf of the Unification Church (National Society for Church and Social Action), which I did for 9 months. It was a memorable experience, but I think the people back on the ranch missed having my help. After the NYC experience, I got a job as an analyst in the water-testing laboratory of the Wyoming Agriculture Department. Vicky got a job working with data management software at the University of Wyoming. Arthur died in the summer of ‘83 from complications developing out of an injury he received trying to drive his pair of mules hitched to a wagon. The funeral was held on the ranch and was attended by lots of people as well as all of our ranch animals.

Even though mom was lonely without Arthur, life was good for Vicky and me, we finally had adequate income, and we enjoyed our experience as “gentleman” ranchers. I got a job as research associate in food microbiology at U. WY., so Vicki and I were riding back and forth together. Sabina had won a Morgan mare that she was now having bred yearly to start a little herd of Morgan horses. Joe attended school at the 2-room schoolhouse in Centennial through 6^th grade and then went to the University School or “Prep” until he started Laramie High School. He also studied piano and trained in swimming, gymnastics, karate, and BMX bicycle racing. We started to make plans for a new house to replace our old trailer-house and maybe buy some lamas to raise and use as a tax-break. Then George moved in with mom and they got married. George did not like me and I did not much care for him. Therefore, in the summer of ’84 we sold our trailer house and moved into an apartment in town (Laramie). I was very upset about being forced off the land. Mom gave us a couple acres of land that was separated from the rest by the highway, which we kept for a while and then sold. In 1985, we bought a house in Laramie from Susan Brewer, a graduate student in the animal science department who had finished her M.S. and was moving.

Then came 1987, which was a year of huge changes, even bigger than ‘84. First, at the beginning of the summer, I was offered a teaching job in a little college in Nebraska; it was my dream job and my last chance to get that type of job. However, Vicky found herself unable to make the move, she felt that she had too much invested in her data management job. Then at the end of the summer, she took a job at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Now it was my turn to be the person who hung-back. I was unable to make the move down to Boulder. Then in the Fall, we found our dream house. A perfectly modern 2-story, 3 bedroom, 2-bath house with attached garage, out-buildings and 80 acres of beautiful land. It even had a horse-riding arena and was located almost on the Colorado-Wyoming border (sort of midway between Laramie and Boulder). Then the week we moved into the house Vicky was diagnosed with breast cancer and was scheduled to have a mastectomy! She began a yearlong course of chemotherapy. She had medical insurance but no sick leave at her new job so we had to ask family for money.

May 12, 1991, after four years and two full courses of chemotherapy, Vicky died from breast cancer at her mother's (Dora Hanson) house in Santa Barbara, CA. Sabina took a year off from vet school to be with her at the end. A couple years later I sold our "dream house" and started work on a master degree in occupational heath and safety at Colorado State University, mainly just to keep my mind busy.

Then on February 5, 1997 I learned that I had another daughter, Dori Jakobson, who was born July 18, 1972 a result of an affair with Margaret Jakobson while I was in graduate school at S.I.U. I went out to meet Dori and Margaret in San Francisco in April, 1998. Margaret was married to Jim Zivic and lived in Richmond, CA

Activities that I like to do

	Bodybuilding
	Handball
	Tandem Biking
	Mountain Biking
	Racquetball
	Scuba diving

Education

Southern Illinois University: 1969–1974 – Ph.D. (microbiology)

Colorado State University: 1993-95 – M.S. (occupational health & safety)

My publication list: Publications

I am also interested in the philosophy of science especially as it pertains to biology.
I wrote a couple papers and posted them on: Paradigms in Biology Home Page