She loved pearls, puns, and puzzles, and pulling out the encyclopedia at dinner.
Janice Howard (Jane) Johnson died Tuesday, February 21, 2023, at the age of 92. A longtime resident of Oklahoma City, Mrs. Johnson was living near family in Woodstock, Georgia, at the time of her death.
Mrs. Johnson was the widow of a newspaper reporter, mother of three sons, a math teacher, college professor, archery coach and judge, and past president of the National Archery Association, now known as USA Archery, the governing body for Olympic archery in the U.S.
At home, she was Jane, Mom, and Abuela. In the classroom, she was Mrs. Johnson. On the archery field, she was “the lady in red,” or if you knew what was good for you, the “beautiful Mrs. Johnson.”
Jane was born January 3, 1931, in Washington, D.C., to Robert Albert Howard Jr. and Anita Beach Aultman. The middle child in a military family, she attended thirteen schools between kindergarten and twelfth grade. Sports helped her find her place in all those new schools, where she earned trophies in swimming, basketball, water ballet, and more.
She met Oklahoma native James Cullen (Jim) Johnson Jr. at Central High School in Washington, D.C., where each commanded a company in the school’s cadet corps. The two high school sweethearts married in Ardmore, Oklahoma, a few years after graduation. Soon after, the couple moved to Ohio, where Jane worked as a secretary while Jim pursued a career as a reporter. When the couple became parents, having three sons in five years, she devoted herself to raising a family, a role that revealed and ignited her love of teaching.
The family spoke Spanish in the home, fostering multilingual acumen in the boys at an early age. Culinary skills were conveyed to the children by alternating meal preparation duties among them each evening. She insisted on family dinners with a properly set table, layering hospitality and etiquette lessons into these thoughtful daily events. (She had strong feelings about elbows, even stronger ones about reaching across the table.)
Rules and structure were a given in the Johnson home, but so was an extraordinary sense of humor. Jane and her husband generously passed razor-sharp wits and playful spirits to their children and grandchildren.
One favorite family tale involves the evening dinner menu.
“What’s for dinner, Mom?”
“Tuna surprise,” she said, busily putting together a tuna casserole.
“How surprising is it?”
“Very surprising,” she said. “You might even call it Tuna Shock.”
She instilled a work ethic in her sons by encouraging the boys to share a paper route. At ages nine and seven, respectively, the two older sons were up before four in the morning to deliver papers around the neighborhood from their bicycles.
Jane and Jim’s youngest son was born with achondroplasia, a bone disorder that causes disproportionate dwarfism. Decades before the internet, she tirelessly researched ways the family could help him reach his potential, making appropriate accommodations but expecting him to do the same things his brothers did. He took over his brother’s paper routes when he was fifteen.
A love of history and killer trivia skills were cultivated on annual summer camping vacations. The family traversed all but two of the lower 48 states on these adventures, stopping at every historical marker (aka hysterical markers) along the way. Every. Single. One.
When the boys were teenagers, Jane pursued a degree in mathematics from Central State College, with a minor in physical education. She became a mathematics teacher at Oklahoma City’s Heritage Hall and then Casady School, where her sons were students. Later she earned a master’s in mathematics education from the University of Central Oklahoma.
Mrs. Johnson is widely regarded as one of the most influential people in archery in the United States, yet she was 49 years old before becoming involved in the sport. Until 1980, her exposure included taking a college class in archery and supporting her sons, who enjoyed being on the school’s archery team. But when Casady’s archery coach retired, she agreed to take the role.
She became a certified archery judge in 1984 and a national judge in the late 1980s. She continued coaching at Casady until retiring in 1991, when, at age 60, she became even more involved in the sport.
Mrs. Johnson pioneered a chapter of the Junior Olympic Archery Development (JOAD) program in Oklahoma City, spending innumerable Saturdays with JOAD shooters, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, 4-H members, and anyone interested in archery. Standing barely over five feet tall, she famously carried a folding stool for checking targets and for other coaching and judging duties. (The stool itself is now famous. Really. You can find its picture on the internet.)
She earned USA Archery’s highest certification, becoming a coach’s coach, and subsequently certifying hundreds of new instructors and coaches, who then certified others themselves. Many have said it is impossible to know her impact on the sport in this regard.
Mrs. Johnson was a scoring judge at the 1996 Olympics and, in 2009, earned the George Helwig award, named for the founder of the JOAD program. She also worked with collegiate programs, receiving USA Archery’s inaugural Jane Johnson award for her contributions to the sport on the college level.
She remained active in the sport well into her 80s. In 2017, at age 87, the room came to its feet when she walked into an archery event to present awards. Later that year, she was honored with USA Archery’s Distinguished Judge Recognition Award. Three days after her death, USA Archery renamed the award the Jane Johnson Distinguished Judge Service Award to honor and pay tribute to her countless contributions to the sport.
Two of her grandchildren lived within two blocks of her home their entire childhood, walking to her house for math lessons. They report she received the “Abuela of the Year” award for 32 years running. Mrs. Johnson celebrated a fiftieth anniversary with her husband two years before he passed away in 2003. She is also preceded in death by their son, Matthew William Johnson, who died in his sleep at age 16.
She is survived by two sons, Cullen Johnson (Dale Cheek), of Nesbit, Mississippi, and Ward Johnson (Sharon) of Woodstock, Georgia; her grandchildren, Blaire Benavides, Cory Benavides, Matthew Johnson, and Mary Johnson; her brother-in-law, William Mott (Uncle Bill) Johnson (Meryl), of Holdenville, Oklahoma; and a great-grandchild, Blakely Benavides-Blackburn.
A memorial service will be held on Sunday, March 26, 2023, at 2 pm at Chapel of St. Edward the Confessor at Casady School, 9500 N. Pennsylvania Avenue, Oklahoma City. A reception will follow until 6 pm at Johnnie’s Charcoal Broiler, 2652 West Britton Rd., Oklahoma City.
In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donating to USA Archery in honor of Jane Johnson. https://www.usarchery.org/giving
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