Jane  Johnson

For Jane and Bob Johnson, moving holds no secrets. Over the 64 years of their married life, they have lived in New York, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia; in the Old Dominion alone they have called Wintergreen, Lynchburg, and Forest home. Bob, an engineer, cites job advancement opportunities with General Electric, his employer for 39 years, as the catalyst. With each move, Jane helped their three sons and one daughter make the necessary adjustments all children want and need.

Both Jane (nee Russell), born in Baltimore, Maryland, and Bob, born in Ashland, Kentucky, grew up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and attended the same high school, as well as the University of Alabama. Somewhere along the way they fell in love and married in 1952. Bob actively served in the United States Air Force for two years and remained in the reserves for ten. Jane briefly assisted in the business school library at the University of Alabama, but over the years the majority of her work experience has been as a volunteer with organizations such as the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and Pink Lady. The most recent, and she says, by far her favorite, was serving as a docent at the Mordecai House in Raleigh, NC.

If you ask the Johnsons about their interests, they will both answer genealogy, Jane with slightly more enthusiasm than Bob. His attention sparks when the conversation turns to computers. As to identifying ancestors, they both have had help. A relative of Bob’s traced both sides of his family to Denmark and gave him the resulting documentation. The Johnsons like to travel and it naturally followed that in 1983, or thereabouts, they decided to go to Denmark and visit Johnson relatives. 

Jane says she caught the genealogy bug on that trip and upon their return to the States began her family history work. First, she gathered two documents: her great-grand father’s published genealogies for his parents’ lines placing her Russell ancestors in 17th century England and a great-aunt’s documentation for another line back to Ireland. But interest in relatives does not stop with those in the past; they both have a lot to say about their nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. 

  Unfortunately Bob died in 2019.