Catherine Marie Johnson

Cathy Johnson was born on July 11, 1952 in Kansas City, Missouri. Her mother was Norma Jean Pearman and her father was Philip Corwin Allen. She was named Catherine Marie after her maternal grandmother Mary Catherine Noffsinger and her paternal grandmother Myrtle Marie Posey (Allen). Both of her parents’ mothers had died when they were young children. She had three brothers, Steven Philip Allen (December 21, 1949), William Patrick Allen (March 27, 1957 – January 13, 1995) and Randall Lee Allen (February 18, 1960 – July 23, 2008). She was very close to her great grandmother Mary Posey and great grandfather Norris Posey and her grandfather Angell Allen. The Posey family date back to the Huguenots in France who fled to England and then to America where Harrison Posey (Cathy’s Great Great Great Great Grandfather) was born in America c. 1810. The Allen family dates back to Noah Allen (Cathy’s Paternal Great Great Great Great Grandfather) born in the US in 1771.

Cathy attended Knotts Elementary School in Kansas City, Missouri until the fourth grade. Her family then moved to Raytown, Missouri, where she attended Blue Ridge Elementary School through the sixth grade, Raytown South Junior High School through the ninth grade, and graduated in 1970 from Raytown South High School. She took dance classes (ballet, tap, jazz and acrobats) for about 10 years. She participated in intramural basketball and volleyball and ran on the girls track team. She also liked to bicycle and play tennis.

After high school she travelled around the country, worked, and started Junior College in Kansas City, Missouri. In January 1973 she moved to Tucson, Arizona. She worked and also attended college. She attended the University of Arizona and received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in September, 1978, with a major in Political Science and split minor in American History and Sociology. She then went to work for the University of Arizona Library. She loved to go backpacking, which she started doing with her family as a child. As an adult she took up rock climbing in the mountains around Tucson. A highlight for her was a 10 day backpack trip in the Northern Cascades on the Washington-Canadian border. She fulfilled her dream of travelling. She traveled extensively in Mexico in the 1970’s, including a round trip train ride from Tucson to Mexico City in 1975. She also spent 8 weeks in Europe in 1981, 3 weeks in Greece in 1983 and 2 weeks in Hawaii in 1985.

While working at the University of Arizona Library she went back to school part time and got a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in May 1985 with a Major in Accounting. Her first job was in El Centro, California as an accountant with the U.S. Gypsum Company. On Memorial Day in 1986 she met Ted Johnson. He was running a foundry in the Maquiladora program on the border in Mexicali, Mexico and living in El Centro. They were married on April 24, 1987.

For the first five years of their marriage, Ted’s brake rotor business required them to move from El Centro to Torrance, California, a year in Dallas, Texas, a year in Elmira, New York and two years in East Thompson, Connecticut. In 1993 they moved back to Dallas. They first lived in Carrollton and then settled in Richardson, Texas in 2013. Cathy worked as an accountant for TDIndustries for nine years. She then did some part time accounting work until she retired in 2004.

Cathy loved sports and played golf for almost 15 years with her husband Ted. She loved her hometown K.C. Royals, the Dallas Cowboys and her alumni University of Arizona Basketball team. A dream of Ted and hers had been to see practice rounds at Augusta National. They won this lotto in 2004 and were admitted to the Augusta practice rounds. She felt that she had been a very lucky sports fan with so many titles her teams had won.

Cathy enjoyed cooking. She had been a very good seamstress as a young adult and later in life took up knitting again and made two homemade quilts. She enjoyed reading, especially classical literature and the great novels, such as Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. She liked all kinds of music. Her favorites were opera, classical, country western, jazz, reggae, classical rock, and big band. She and her husband attended many operas and concerts. One of their favorites was going to classical guitar concerts. They also were members of the Dallas Arboretum and liked going to the DFW zoos and art museums.

Cathy loved travelling and she and her husband Ted had travelled to all 254 counties in Texas, all 50 states, and been to Europe ten times from 2006 to 2011. Both she and her husband Ted loved photography and she used the software ZoomBrowser to make slide shows of their travels and she also kept travel diaries, as well as yearly event diaries. She used the software PowerPoint to make slide shows of the things she saw while travelling. She made one on the Courthouses of Texas. She also created many others including one on Waterfalls, Bridges, Lighthouses, Butterflies, Wildlife and other Animal Creatures, and Towers, Statues and Monuments. She then started slideshows on her childhood, places she had lived, literature, great philanthropists, US Presidents, American History and the history and information of the countries she had visited, to name a few. She also liked to do slide shows on subjects such as art and all kinds of things dealing with history. She used this as a way to view art and learn about other things all over the world after long plane rides became uncomfortable. She often said that she was a student for life. She had a great curiosity and enjoyed learning about things and also saw it as a way to remember as her memory faded.

She was a proud American and especially proud of her husband being an Army Veteran of the Vietnam War. She will be buried with him in the Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery.

She is survived by her husband, Ted, of Richardson, Texas and two nephews, William Eric Allen and Toni Lee Allen of Landstuhl, Germany, and a sister-in-law Darlene Taylor of Arlington. Nephew William moved to Dallas in 2016.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday, January 20, 2018 at 2pm in Ted Dickey West Funeral Home. Those wishing to send their condolences or sign the online guestbook may visit www.teddickeywestfuneral.com.