Thursday, March 1, 2018
To the family of Mr Johnson.
I was so sad to hear of Mr Johnson's passing. I am a 54 year old graduate of WMCHS and former student. Mr Johnson taught me BASIC computer language in the late 1970s. We had a Tandy RadioShack TRS-80 computer, with a ticker tape printer. We had to save our program on audiotape if we didn't finish it in the 20 minutes we had signed up to use it.
Mr Johnson only taught me that one class, however he is the most influential teacher of my life. He opened my eyes to the wonder of computer programming, and he managed a classroom of students with a diversity of math levels so effortlessly. I'll never forget when he wanted to teach us how to program functions in BASIC. He taught us sine, cosine and tangent, however since some students had not had trigonometry, he quickly ran through how the formulas were derived. He did not say the word Trigonometry, or sine, cosine and tangent. We named the functions some random words, and I remember we used "Maxwell" as the name of the tangent function. This was all so that the students who never had trig would not be intimidated. We who had trig watched in amazement as he taught these functions in about 20 minutes, wishing it had been that easy when we had learned it in math honors. Towards the end of the class, he erased the function names on the board and wrote in sine, cosine and tangent. It was a great moment when kids realized they had followed along and understood TRIGONOMETRY. We then went on to learn to incorporate functions in BASIC.
The next day, we signed out a record player and someone brought in the record with the Beatle's song, "Maxwell's Silver Hammer." Mr Johnson surprised us all by allowing us to play it quite loudly in class. Along comes another teacher from next door, bursting into the room, assuming we had been left to our own devices, as Mr Johnson normally ran a tight ship in class. I remember her surprise that Mr Johnson had let us play the song - as surprised as we were!
I remember being freaked out because the fearsome Mrs McNally audited the BASIC class and sat in the back. Mr Johnson gave is a quiz that had line numbers but they were out of order, to see who would notice and go in number order than in chronological order. I remember Mrs McNally got it wrong and I was amazed and secretly delighted that I got it right. I had dropped her class the year before because I was so afraid of her that I could not sleep. And here i got the answer right and she didn't!
I also remember some of us made Mr Johnson a birthday cake. We actually lit candles on it in the room next door with the teacher's blessing and carried in to his room and sang HB to him. I am sure we wouldn't be allowed to light candles in school today.
We used to call him "REJ" because he had a monogrammed shirt with his initials on it.
I send my heartfelt sympathy and condolences to the family and loved ones of Mr. Johnson. He has made a huge difference in the world through his teaching career, and left this world a lot better than it would have been without him. I will always be grateful to have been his student even if only for one semester, and I'll always remeber him fondly.
With love,
Alison Bradbrooke Visokay, WMCHS class of 1981
