Dr. James Paul “J.P.” Johnston Jr., a life-saving surgeon, tireless learner, veteran, and beloved family member, lived a life of service and compassion from May 1, 1926, to March 23, 2020. Paul is survived by his wife, Joyce Runge Johnston, whom he said he could always tell apart from her twin “by her beautiful smile,” as well as their four children, Martha Priska (Everett Knox), Susan (Henry) Clarke, Carolyn (Martin) Jaster, and David Johnston; and grandchildren, Bryce Clarke, Emily Jaster, and Ariadna Johnston. He is preceded in death by his parents, Matilda Lundberg Johnston and Dr. James Paul Johnston Sr., and his younger brother, Ralf Willard Johnston.
Paul Jr.’s practice of medicine had always meant far more to him than his career. His mother had been a nurse, and Paul, who missed her deeply, remembered her dedication to women’s rights and suffrage. His father, a general medical practitioner, had allowed the young Paul to accompany him on house calls—fostering the beginning of his vocational passion. Paul lost his father at 19, and carried his memory through his own medical practice.
Upon graduating from United Township High School in 1944, Paul enlisted in the Navy V12 program, which permitted him to continue his education at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and then University of Illinois Medical School in Chicago—as the military had deemed it more important to have another doctor than another soldier. After medical school, he completed his internship at Indianapolis General Hospital. For his required service, Paul drove a medical care bus around the midwest for two years. It was during his service that he married Joyce, on September 5, 1953.
In 1958, following his residency at Methodist Hospital in Des Moines, Paul began his career working for Dr. Helfrich, and opened his own practice about two years later. He built lasting relationships with his nurses and patients, and remained in the Reserves and National Guard for 28 years. In his retirement, Paul would visit his former nurses to thank them, and would attend memorial services for his patients of decades prior.
All his life, Paul was deeply uncomfortable with his relative privilege and was devoted to caring for the less fortunate. Upon his retirement, at age 63, he volunteered as a doctor in Malawi, St. Lucia, and Jamaica, and served on several Native American reservations. But despite his world travel, Paul always said that Rock Island, Illinois was his favorite city in the world. He showed his love through the Rock Island County Historical Society, as a curator for the Carriage House Museum.
Paul was a man of profound sentimentality and cherished his time with family. His children remember his evenings spent with a book and a martini, and his piles of wood-shavings from his ongoing whittling crafts (many of which continue to fill their houses).
With his love for reading, Paul always had poetry in his mind and his heart. One of his favorite poems, Longfellow’s “The Children’s Hour,” is fit to describe his commitment to family and how his family will remember him:
I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.
And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!
As his granddaughter, I only knew my Grandpa Paul in the last years of his life—and I still find it difficult to describe the breadth of his interests and achievements in one short article. I will miss our evening conversations on history, the piles of books he would send me, and the journeys we traveled together. My grandfather was a man absorbed by ideas and adventure, yet compassionately tied to the communities around him. No other sensibility could have filled his letters and journals with so much life and vibrancy.
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