Helen Constance Johnson

Connie was born in Halma, Minnesota to Henry and Borghild Timm, children of German and Norwegian immigrants. As a child, she and her twin brothers Robert and Richard lived in a logging camp where their mother cooked for the loggers and her father ran the crew. They moved to Spokane where they ran a grocery store and she later worked in the family’s soda fountain. She packed parachutes during World War II.

Connie married Portland native Harold Albert Johnson, son of Swedish immigrants and Chief Storekeeper in the Navy. They settled in southeast Portland near Harold’s family and started their own. While raising her children, Connie graduated from Portland State with a degree in Biology and Chemistry and worked as a medical technologist at Bess Kaiser Hospital in Portland. She was also an accomplished seamstress, making dresses for the ballroom dances she and her husband loved to attend. After she retired, she and her husband traveled, until his death, to more than forty countries, including Norway, Germany and Sweden.

She is survived by her two daughters: Janice Johnson (Alan Posner) of Vancouver, Washington and Nancy Donahue of Lake Oswego, Oregon; and three grandchildren: T. Ryan Donahue (Heidi), Scott Donahue and Kara Donahue. Per Connie’s request, there will be no memorial service. Donations in her honor can be made to the World Wide Fund for Nature.