Dorothy Greene Johnson

Johnson, Dorothy Greene
the heart that stopped last week on March 29, 2011, leaving this lambent spirit in her 89th year, still an inspiration to humankind, beat a single idealistic story, straight and true, but of many, many strands; and most began far back. "Wilsonianism," unbroken internationalism, seems strongest and longest of these strands from 1919 to now. Her fight for the "Lend-Lease Bill" (1940-1941), a girl amid white-haired sages, was her number one victory: England would live, and Hitler was doomed. Her next landmark was a B.A. in Philosophy. Diploma in hand, from the University of Chicago in March 1942, she joined a formidable inter-American team in Washington, DC. She rose to Field Officer with the Department of State in 1947. That June she married Paul Barton Johnson (they hired three men to do her work) and she turned to her husband Paul's academia. In 1956 she attained a Doctorate Degree in British History. Dorothy and her husband Paul both taught at the University of Chicago. The strand of politics ran parallel. Battling against McCarthyism and Stalinists alike, came natural. The Johnsons, however, also took on our own America's State Department three times, against the "Passport Loyalty Oath"-until the Supreme Court concurred with her. She avidly pursued civil rights and integration, civil liberties, feminism (ancient and genuine). Roosevelt University's Women's Scholarship Association thrice elected her President. Judaism and Israel, round out the list. She loved to read fiction and women's biographies. Somehow, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Dickens and Jane Austen, added ornament. Some friends today are inconsolable; but Dorothy talks with mother (Mildred Brody), dad (Louis
Greenberg) and brother Rick, and smiles an invitation. A funeral service in Chicago's Jewish "Beverly Cemetery" is being scheduled. Arrangements by Messinger Indian School Mortuary.