Genealogy whiz loved travel, fun

While visiting Sweden in 1972, Kathleen Pierce Johnson found the 12th-century church her father-in-law attended before immigrating to the United States at 16. For Johnson, a genealogy enthusiast, it was another important part of family history she was able to experience.

“I don’t know how many courthouses they visited, cemeteries,” said her daughter, Carolyn Adams. “She wrote letters to people she didn’t know to get information. She was very good with research.”

Johnson, a stayat-home mom with a love for travel, died Sunday under Arkansas Hospice care at home in Searcy from congestive heart failure complications. She was 96. Growing up at a lumber camp called Crossett Camp, Johnson lived with her family in a renovated boxcar that her daughter, Sara Richardson, described as a “shotgun house.”

As a child, Johnson made taffy and loved riding the handcars up and down the railroad tracks with friends, Richardson said.

At 19, Johnson studied to become a nurse in Crossett.

“We have pictures of her holding babies after they were born,” Richardson said. “Anyone that needed help, she was there. She just loved tending to people.”

In 1936, Johnson married Robert Wesley Johnson and stayed home to raise five children.

“Because [my parents] grew up in hard times, it was important for the kids to have a good education,” Richardson said. “We all went to college.”

Along with being a disciplinarian, Johnson enjoyed having fun with her children, Adams said.

“My mother had gotten us all bubble gum and I remember us in the kitchen and we were all blowing the biggest bubbles,” Richardson said. “It was so much fun.”

An active member of the First United Methodist Church, Johnson leaned on her faith when her 31-yearold son, Robert Wayne Johnson, was killed in a car accident in 1968.

“She knew that God was always with her and that she could call on him at any time, which she did,” Richardson said. “We were taught to live by our faith.”

After Johnson’s husband retired in 1972, the couple explored Alaska for a summer, riding in their Volkswagen camper.

“That’s one of the things they instilled in us, ‘There are places beyond our house, go see it,’” Adams said. “They kept talking about the beauty of Alaska, the northern lights.”

For years, the couple traveled throughout the United States, Mexico and Europe, on trips that often tied into finding out more about their heritage, Adams said.

Johnson traced the family’s lineage back to Charlemagne, who became king of the Franks in 768 A.D. and later emperor of the Romans.

“I think her real skill was in the ability to look at a problem, analyze it and figure out where the records might be,” said her son, Jim “Buddy” Johnson, an adjunct professor and retired senior manager of the history and genealogy section of the Memphis Public Library. “Everything was by hand, she didn’t type, she didn’t use the computer.”

Despite her declining health, it was still Johnson’s priority to take care of her family, including the grandchildren who affectionately called her “Moma Lucy.”

“Even with her being on the walker, she was still trying to dust mop the floor ... Anytime the grandkids came home, she made sure she had a pan of biscuits,” Richardson said. “She insisted on doing her own laundry. She said, if she ever stopped, that’d be the end of it, and she didn’t want to stop.”