Thomas A. Johnson

Thomas Alois Johnson, 66, died at his home in Fairbanks, Alaska, on December 6, 2024. He was born on January 20, 1958, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the fifth of six sons of Dennis and Dorraine (Hennen) Johnson.

Tom grew up in the Minneapolis suburb of Golden Valley in a great neighborhood populated by over 30 kids, mostly from other large families like his own. He attended grade school at Meadow Brook Elementary and Good Shepherd School and spent most of his childhood literally running around outdoors with other kids from the neighborhood unsupervised. This included building forts in the adjoining swamps and woods that had not yet been developed, where he and his friends regularly reenacted the major battles of World War II. Tom's nickname was "Sarge," and he always respected the U.S. Armed Forces. As a child and as an adult, he loved being outdoors, and his favorite place in the world was the family cabin on Lake Mille Lacs.

After graduating from Benilde-St. Margaret's High School 1976, Tom followed in the footsteps of his elder brother Doug and moved to Alaska seeking adventure and fortune. Ultimately, four other kids he grew up with "in the neighborhood" on Paisley Lane and several of his high school classmates also moved to Alaska. They all arrived after the boom years of the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and sought gainful employment elsewhere. This unusual Paisley Lane-Benilde cohort of Minnesotan transplants became Tom's life-long friends, companions, and supporters.

Tom was fortunate to find a job with the State of Alaska on a crew of preconstruction geological surveyors (or "drillers") that took the soil samples needed to ascertain if it would be possible to build roads and landing strips, mainly in the wilderness, all over the state of Alaska. During his over thirty-year career, he advanced from being a laborer to the head of a crew of six that traversed Alaska regularly with heavy equipment on logistically complicated jobs that included being air-lifted in military-grade cargo planes into remoter regions. There was no part of the vast state of Alaska that Tom did not visit, from the Aleutian Islands in the Pacific Ocean in the southwest or Juneau on the Pacific coast in the southeast to the northernmost stretches of Arctic Alaska and covering the entire Alaskan interior in between.

Tom was an adventurous and rugged outdoorsman. The first home he purchased - called the "animal shack" - was 15 miles outside of Fairbanks, situated on a side road at the end of a steep quarter-mile driveway in a twenty-acre stand of trees. Tom had no problem roughing it and lived there year-round for well over a decade without central heating or indoor plumbing. His luxuries were a wood-burning stove and an outhouse.

He also enjoyed his adventuresome and arduous work outdoors as a driller, although it took its toll on him over the years. Working twelve-hour days and seven-day weeks in remote areas, where Tom and his crew had to provision themselves, were routine during the "drilling season." Tom also carried a side arm to protect himself from bears and moose when he was on wilderness assignments, and he once shot a caribou in the Arctic encouraged by local but unarmed Inuit hunters, much to the delight of an entire village that had not eaten meat for months.

Tom took great pride in his skill as a blue-collar professional. Based on his years of experience, he was a skilled manager of men and machines, and he always could find the actual depth of the permafrost critical for planning construction by "reading" how his drills reacted when they hit it. (He said that the university-trained geologists frequently did not have the vaguest idea.) By the end of his thirty-year career, Tom was an acknowledged expert colloquially called the "professor of drilling" by practitioners in his field.

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Thoughts and memories from daughter Chelsie and son Noah

He also took great pride in being left-handed, channeling his creativity into drawing and writing. He had a knack for pencil sketching, often creating funny cartoons of his friends enjoying the outdoors. His way with words came through in heartfelt love letters and poignant poems that reflected his thoughtful nature.

Tom worked hard, played hard, and raised two children, Chelsi and Noah. He instilled a love for the outdoors in his children. Whether it was pulling them on the back of the snow machine, snowshoeing through the wilderness, downhill skiing in Alaska, or fishing and jet skiing on Mille Lacs Lake in Minnesota. The outdoors was his favorite place to share with them. He and Noah spent hours motorbiking all over the neighborhood while he and Chelsi took many scenic road trips, where he always reminded her, "Take the scenic route."

He also nurtured a love for travel, taking his family on trips to explore new places. In 2009, Chelsi chose New York City. He delighted in planning these adventures, ensuring Chelsi and Noah saw the major tourist attractions-the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the Twin Towers Memorial, a Broadway show, and much more. No matter the destination, he always found ways to make each trip memorable.

Just as the outdoors and travel were central to his life, so was music. Music and singing were among Tom's greatest passions, a love he eagerly passed on to his family. Whether Frank Sinatra or Gladys Knight and the Pips played on the surround sound as they danced in the living room, or the car stereo blasted Linkin Park on a drive, music was the ever-present backdrop to their lives.

Above all, he taught the importance of quality time with family. He cherished family meals, especially the big Sunday breakfasts he made, filled with pancakes, eggs, and sausage links. He even heated up the syrup. He went all out at Christmas, making it magical for his family. He strung lights along the house and trees outside while keeping a crackling fire inside next to the brightly lit tree.

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Finally, Tom was forthcoming and friendly company and had a great sense of humor. He loved socializing with family, friends, and strangers, too, and he was generous with his affection. He was an avid fisherman and golfer with more luck in the boat than on the fairway and an enthusiastic fan of the Twins, the Vikings, and the Gophers. For reasons no one really understands, he thought red suspenders were fashionable.

After his retirement, he planned ambitious annual trips with his aging father, who was once mistaken as his elder brother, much to Tom's chagrin. Tom and his dad were congenial traveling partners. Trips Tom planned included regularly driving cross-country to the spring training camps of the Twins in Arizona or Florida, attending the Masters at Augusta National in Georgia, a fly-in fishing trip in Alaska (with brother Steve as a guest), multiple excursions to Europe, including a visit to Vienna, and a grand two-week tour of New Zealand.

Tom endured chronic back problems from a lifetime of physically demanding work and was diagnosed with Bipolar I in 2015. Over the last decade of his life, he faced profound highs and lows, often compounded by struggles with substance abuse. He sought help through treatment centers and collaborated with leading doctors and psychiatrists at the Mayo Clinic and other Minnesota hospitals. In 2019, he moved to Minneapolis to focus on professional treatment while also living with and caring for his father, alongside his brother Doug, until his father's passing at the age of ninety-eight in April 2022. In mid-2024, Tom returned to Alaska, and in a moment of overwhelming despair, he ended his own life there.

Remember Tom at his best, and remember him in your prayers.

Tom is survived by his daughter, Chelsi (and her mother, Diane Yaggi), and his son, Noah (and his mother, Lindsey Trainer); and his five brothers, their spouses, and nine nieces and nephews: Steve and Pat (Elisabeth, Ted); Lonnie and Monika (Dennis, Oliver); Keith and Julie (Brian, Ben, Marraine); Doug and Howie (Jeremy, Kitty); Peter and Carol (Taliah, Vincent). Tom is also survived by twenty cousins on the paternal side of his family, whom he loved to see at reunions, two half-aunts, Judy and Claudia, and one cousin, Mark, on the maternal side of his family.

In accordance with his wishes, Tom will be cremated, and his ashes will be interned at the gravesite of his parents at Gethsemane Catholic Cemetery in New Hope, Minnesota, at a later date. Celebrations of his life will be organized in Minneapolis and Fairbanks next spring and announced in the future.

Instead of flowers (or planting trees as advertised below), the family kindly requests donations to any one of the local chapters of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (https://www.nami.org/findsupport/), the nation's largest grassroots, not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing support to those in need and to raising stigma free awareness for mental health issues.