Joseph Arthur Johnston Sr.

We are filled with sorrow and profound sadness to say goodbye to Joe. It is far too soon for such a loss, and we are left grappling with how to make sense of it all.

Joe was born in Texas, a summer baby, to his parents, Hubert and Lois who predeceased him. From the start, he was obviously bright, precocious, and mischievous. Back when people still smoked indoors at shopping centers, his mother often caught him taking cigarette butts out of those tall stainless steel ashtrays in department stores and placing them between the fingers of the mannequins who were modeling the season’s trends. That’s life with a clever kid - they keep you on your toes. By the time he left their home for college, his parents had likely worn out several pairs of pointe shoes.

It became clear very early on that Joe was anything but average. He was uniquely gifted, uncommonly bright. A deep and abiding love for reading started at a young age. Most people who knew Joe would agree that he is likely the most well-read person they have ever known. Among his favorite writers were John Updike, Jonathan Franzen, Cormac McCarthy, Hemingway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, David Foster Wallace - the list goes on and on and then on some more. If you can think of a really good book, then you can bet Joe Johnston read it. And if Joe recommended a book to you? Well, you marched straight to the bookstore or opened your Amazon app to get it. His recommendation was a guaranteed good read, no doubt about it. Joe was a true intellectual, one with a gift for remaining warm, approachable, and engaging.

Joe developed a love for music at an early age. He was the one you wanted to curate the playlist for a gathering. Luna, REM, The Drive By Truckers, Johnny Cash, Steely Dan, Yo La Tengo, The Dandy Warhols, The Mountain Goats, Credence Clearwater Revival - Joe was always the first to tell you about a great new song or band. Joe made sure that get-togethers with family and friends included great tunes. The soundtrack of his life was epic and we were lucky to hear it.

He was also a talented tennis player. He played on his high school team and later at The University of the South, familiarly known as Sewanee. While at Sewanee, he made some of the best friends of his life. Many of those friends were found in his fraternity, Delta Tau Delta. Because life doesn’t always follow a straight path (and because he had a little too much fun the first two years at Sewanee), Joe left the mountain for a brief stint in the Army, with a promise to return. A promise he kept, graduating a few years later. Joe loved Sewanee, and loved to tell stories about his time there. Joe was a gifted story teller. His words, his ability to describe people and places and things brought you into the story. Technicolor, 3-D, Dolby surround sound stories - always a rapt audience. He was a gifted writer. We are left to treasure all of the stories that he shared with us.

Joe’s professional life was rewarding. He spent many years teaching at prep schools like Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio, as well as Lake Forest Academy in Lake Forest, Illinois. He maintained meaningful relationships with many of his former students, a real testament to how influential he was as an educator. He later joined the corporate world, working at Korn/Ferry International, Lantern Partners, and Quick Leonard Kieffer. Wherever Joe spent time, he left with lifelong friends.

One of the pitfalls of being a military brat is that you have to move a lot, leaving familiar places and friends behind - but it can create a special skill that will serve you very well throughout your life. You can become exceptional at making friends. Boy, howdy, was Joe great at that.

We have heard from so many of them. Orn Backstrom remembers Joe as a polymath and a bon vivant. Their weekly poker games, the nights playing pool at Rock Bottom, how much Joe was admired among his friends in the Army, his delight in being Joe’s doubles partner which allowed him to simply stand by while Joe served ace after ace, leaving their opponents complaining about court conditions.

His friend, fraternity brother, and roommate at Sewanee, John Greer, shared this: “Being Joe's friend was a fabulously rewarding experience. No matter how much I gave to the relationship, I always felt like I received even more. He loved his friends with all his heart, and we loved him--

his commanding eloquence, his biting sense of humor, his wonderful fellowship. He and I played tennis together, drank beer together, and engaged in the bawdy activities that 19 year-old boys are prone to do. Unfortunately, most of my favorite stories about Joe are more appropriate for a roast than an obituary. I wish Joe could hear them all one more time. He would relish each one--and roar with laughter. I was lucky enough to see him in 2021 and again in 2023. Each time I saw him, we picked up right where we left off, as if we had spent the entire previous day together. Usually, though, in later years, we corresponded by text or by phone call. I'm generally not one for long phone conversations, but Joe and I could easily talk for an hour or more. We shared so many great memories, and he was such an engaging guy. Of course, not enough can ever be said about Joe's powerful intellect and his sharp wit. I'm honored to have been his friend and terribly saddened that I'll never see him again. I'm also sad for all of us that we'll never see him in the role of the wise old man. Joe would have been great in the role.”

One of his dearest friends, Thom Mansfield, had this to say about having Joe as a friend: “Everyone has two or three people in their life who sparked a tectonic- or even seismic- shift in their view of the world. Joe was that person for a great number of people, whether as a family member, friend, schoolmate, teammate, professional colleague, teacher, coach, or mentor. His intellect, audacity, volubility, and curiosity about people, places and things along with his fearlessness in sharing his opinions and insights on pretty much any topic made it so.

As a deep “music head,” he introduced friends to artists ranging from 1970s Jackson Browne and Bob Dylan to 1980s REM and Hüsker Dü to 1990s Luna and The Mountain Goats. If you shared a cocktail with him late into the night in his loft on Printers Row or balcony at the Marina City Towers in Chicago between the 1990s and the 2020s, you may have received an exegesis on the relative merits of Charlie Parker’s bebop versus Miles Davis’ modal jazz.

Getting to that balcony overlooking the Chicago River meant walking by his exquisitely curated collection of literature. Each book fed him, filling the nooks and crannies of his head and heart. He was kind enough to suggest you take up David Foster Wallace, and he may have persuaded you to sacrifice a summer reading Proust’s “Swann’s Way.” He would explain, as William Faulkner did in “Requiem for a Nun,” that “The past is never dead. It’s not even the past.” And, when the conversation about Faulkner led to the famous ending in “The Sound and the Fury,” there would be a fervent- perhaps clamorous- debate about whether the South was to be hated.

Joe also shared his passion for books with his grandchildren, whose entry into the world he celebrated with his friends via shared photographs and heartfelt effusive praise. He loved reading to them on his lap. When he swiped an antique copy of Hamilton Wright Mabie’s book, “Famous Stories Every Child Should Know” from the attic of a 150-year-old mansion owned by a friend’s grandmother, he hoped that one day it would be cherished by his children’s children.

In addition to being an excellent tennis player, Joe loved following world tour tennis from his condo and seeing tennis in person, including watching Rafael Nadal win a semifinal match on his way to taking the 2019 US Open Championship. As much as he enjoyed watching tennis, he loved even more tenaciously debating whether Nadal, Federer or Djokovic was the “GOAT” and whether Carlos Alcaraz would surpass them all. Of course, he was always right, as he would declare with nary an ounce of shame or doubt.”

Joe’s friends were immensely important to him. If you count yourself among them, we thank you for the way you made his life full and rich, that you loved him the way he loved you.

So many things made Joe’s life brilliant and fulfilling. But, man, his family meant the world to him. His sisters, Kathryn and Sarah, were the luckiest siblings in the world. To have a brother like Joe meant long talks on the phone, having a trusted confidante and advisor, a cheerleader always encouraging you, a safe place to land when life hurt, inside jokes, absurd nicknames, and a shared love for their mother’s oyster cornbread dressing (iykyk). There exists between them a sacred vault of shared memories that are only stories to others. Perhaps the best way Joe showed his love for his sisters was the way he loved their children. He was an exceptional uncle to Laurel, Perry, and Trey (who predeceased him). He developed unique relationships with each of them. Joe was a constant source of love, encouragement, and devotion to each of them. And they absolutely adored him.

But the things that brought Joe Johnston the greatest pride, joy and happiness were his children and grandchildren - full stop. He is survived by his children Joe Johnston, Jr. (Melissa), Catherine Walker (Mark), Barbara Baumgartner (George), and Max Johnston. Also his grandchildren - Helena and Caitlin Johnston, Robinson Walker, Grace and Clara Baumgartner. If you knew Joe then you knew about his kids. He was immensely proud of them, and rightly so. Joe lit up when talking about his bright, kind, interesting, funny, engaging children. It comes as no surprise that they have wonderful memories of Joe as their father. Joe filled their lives with music, books, movies, travel, good tv binges, new foods, and so much more. Joe did some really memorable things as a dad. He took them to see plays. Laughed with them at comedy clubs. Rocked out with them at music festivals. He took the kids for post-Thanksgiving book splurges and purchased dozens of books for them to read in the coming year. He made sure they travelled to new cities and dabbled in unfamiliar cuisine. One time he took them to watch every Oscar-nominated movie when they were visiting so the Oscars would be a better watch. He was their tv binge partner, watching shows like Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, and Thirtysomething, He made sure they knew about his favorite movies - The Graduate, High Fidelity, The Big Chill, The Big Lebowski… He helped foster their own interests, encouraged their curiosity, and indulged and delighted in their individualities. And when his children started having their own children? Well, he loved them, too, marvelling at the grandness of these new relationships.

And while it might seem a bit much, we are indebted to the great city of Chicago, his chosen home. After his family and friends, good books and good music, Joe loved living in Chicago. He made his home in Marina City Towers and never tired of the view from his balcony. Of all the cities in the world, Chicago was the perfect fit for Joe. We will miss hearing the sounds of the city when he called us from that balcony, knowing he was right where he wanted to be. Thank you, Windy City, and we are sorry for your loss.

It is impossible to understand that we will never be able to see Joe again, that we can never call him and hear his voice over the phone again, that we will never again hear his take on politics, that we will never be able to share a good meal or a fine cocktail with him again. It is unthinkable that we will hear music that he will never hear, that we will read good books that he will never read. But we will think of him when we do. He will remain alive in our collective memory. And we will miss him while feeling so damn lucky that he was ours for a time.

When the obituary for Joe’s mother was being written, the only thing Joe insisted be included was a particularly favorite poem of his. He also wanted to write the words that preceded it. It seems only fitting to let Joe have the last word - he’d have liked that.

“There is much to grieve when a beloved and influential life ends, but perhaps the largest loss is the sudden and endless absence of a unique and irreplaceable personality, of that person's specialized humor, all of their inside jokes and well-worn quips, their way of being with others, the specific voice that you will never hear again. John Updike said it best.” - JAJ

Perfection Wasted - by John Updike

And another regrettable thing about death

is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,

which took a whole life to develop and market —

the quips, the witticisms, the slant

adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest

the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched

in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,

their tears confused with their diamond earrings,

their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,

their response and your performance twinned.

The jokes over the phone. The memories packed

in the rapid-access file. The whole act.

Who will do it again? That's it: no one;

imitators and descendants aren't the same.

A Celebration of Joe's life will be held at a later date in Michigan.