Norma Gladys Johnson

Norma Gladys Johnson gave her last breath with both her son Andy and daughter in law Julieta holding her hands. Her memory had left her a few years prior but her reasoning was impeccable. Realizing this, she had said that if she got to pick one, that is what she would have held onto.

Norma lived in the same Grosse Pointe Michigan neighborhood for 91 years. Born in Detroit, she was a brilliant student and got scholarship offers but went to work to maintain her homemaker mother and two younger siblings after her father’s passing. She was an assistant at a lawyer’s office which made her quite knowledgeable all things legal. She held happy memories of vacations with the cousins in Quebec and swimming in Lake Saint Clair which was just a couple blocks away from home. She also remembered her first love Thomas Sullivan who died overseas while in service.

After marrying Don Johnson, she volunteered with the Red Cross for many years. She raised her oldest son, also named Donald Johnson, with a passion for spacecraft and he went on to design jets for McDonnell Douglas and then Boeing, and become an expert in hypersonic flight. Attempts for a second child had been forgotten when, seventeen years after her first born, Andy showed up and was very spoiled by the parents and the grandmother. Always fascinated by space, she welcomed Andy’s friends (the space cadets) at their home, a quick snack always at the ready.

When Andy brought Julieta home to meet his mother, Norma told her she always wanted a daughter and asked Julieta to call her Mom. Both her sons, daughter in law as well as her brother Bruce and his wife Vivian got together for holidays every year. Her cousin Lorraine was always in touch along with the children and grandchildren of her sibling Gordy.

Norma always kept busy at the local library and at the bridge club, driving friends around until her driver’s license was not renewed at age 91. She then moved to St Louis, Missouri with her son Donald, and when he passed away five years later, Andy and Julieta brought her close to their home in the suburbs of Chicago, where she went on to socialize with other residents and staff. Julieta visited her daily since, and then they all moved to Hawai’i at the end of last year. In Hawai’i Norma enjoyed looking at palm trees and the blue sky in Kona, and listening to the many birds that came by around the pool at the retirement community.