Michael Robert Johnson

Michael Robert Johnson Sept 3, 1960 to October 27, 2014 Michael was born Sept 3, 1960. He was the older brother to Joanne Marie (Johnson) Engler and Lisa Mae (Johnson) Volz. Because both sisters were younger, whenever there was a shopping outing, their Mom had a girl in each hand, and Mike was expected to follow. Well, Mike took advantage of the opportunity to not have to hold hands whenever he could, whether shopping or at a park, and would 'disappear'. They never knew where exactly he was, but he always knew where to find his Mom. When it was time to leave to return home, Mom had to wait for him to show up (usually for only a short time). When the family lived in Richmond, California from Aug 1964 to Aug 1966, they belonged to a co-op supermarket. One day while shopping, an announcement came over the loudspeaker that a small child was lost and would his parents please come to the front of the store. Yes you guessed it - Michael. The next time they went to the co-op, the loudspeaker asked if the parent of Michael Johnson would please come to the front of the store. And the next time. And the next time. After a while, Michael's Mom took her time picking him up from the front of the store because he wasn't really lost - she knew where he would be. In the summer of 1965, the family visited their maternal grandparents in Flushing, New York. While shopping in a supermarket there, Mike disappeared again, and his Nana became concerned. Mom told Nana that when they were finished shopping they would look for him. Michael was found standing at the front of the store looking for a salesperson to tell them he was "lost" so that the store would announce for his mother to come get him. In New York, no one paid any attention to the little boy standing at the front of the store. After that day, Michael gave up playing this game. While in California, Michael attended kindergarten at the Balboa School and showed everyone that he had a great sense of balance. He rode a bicycle for the first time across the Balboa school yard, right into the fence. He had learned to ride, but not how to use the brakes to stop! Over the years, Michael could be found in interesting places. In 1967 the family went to the Expo in Montreal Canada on the day both Charles DeGaulle and Fidel Castro chose to make an appearance. The place was mobbed. There were more than a million people at the fair. The family made the decision to leave, but Michael disappeared again. The family waited and waited. Finally they heard a voice say "Up Here!" Mike had climbed up a nearby lamp post and was sitting on the top of the cube shaped lamp fixture a couple of stories above the ground. When Michael was about 12 years old, the family attended a family picnic hosted by the Bureau of Ships at Fort Washington Park. There was food and games all day. Near the end of the day when everyone was packing up to leave, Michael, who hadn't been seen for a while, starts calling to the family. "Look up, look up." There he was in the very top branches of a huge tree that looked to be 75 feet high. He also liked to climb up on the top of the roof of the family home on Port Echo Lane and call down to his family. In all of these escapades, Michael never slipped or fell. His balance was amazing. In August 1966, the family returned to Maryland, to Kitmore Lane in Bowie. Michael attended first thru third grade at Foxhill Elementary School (the school was re-purposed now as part of City Hall). Mike finished elementary school at Pointer Ridge Elementary when the family moved to Pointer Ridge to the Port Echo Lane house. It was during his Junior high school years that the county instituted busing - a program to help diversify the student bodies of each school. Michael attended Benjamin Tasker JHS for one year as an honor roll student and then was bussed to Thomas G. Pullen JHS where he graduated. He attended Bishop McNamara school in 9th grade, a catholic high school. He did not want to continue there, and really wanted to be with the friends he grew up with, so in 10th grade, Michael was enrolled at Largo SHS where he graduated in 1978. Michael was well liked by his teachers. He was extremely smart and loved to learn about things that interested him. As a child he knew all the names of every different type of construction truck ever made. He followed the American space program. His Nana took him to interesting places like the United Nations, the Empire State Building, Radio City Music Hall, and Rockefeller Plaza, to name a few. He also got to see the 1965 New York World's Fair. Michael also loved to read. In 5th grade his teacher gave Michael a book to read. He returned in 2 hours claiming he had read it. When the teacher quizzed him on the material, he had all the right answers. Thinking maybe he had read that book before, she gave him another book to read. When he returned again, she quizzed him on it and, yes, he got all the answers right. After that, his teacher started giving him books to read on the 9th grade level for the remainder of the school year. During his school years, Mike was a Cub Scout, a Boy Scout, and an Explorer Scout. One of the badges that a scout can earn is the genealogy merit badge. During his high school years, Michael embarked on a project to trace his ancestry. He wrote to many of his older relatives, and collected so much information that he drew up a scroll, well in excess of six feet long, showing his family tree. From his great-aunt Louise Johnson, he received a set of handwritten notes spanning over the decades that spoke about his ancestors. He learned that his Johnson ancestors had been in America a long time, since 1630, and that his immigrant ancestor, Capt. Edward Johnson founded a number of towns in Massachusetts and wrote the first history of New England. Michael's work served as the core of what we know today, because he reached out to so many of the family. Music was a very important part of family life. From the time the siblings were little, the family had a record player playing music whenever the kids were having fun. Mike's maternal grandmother thought it was important to introduce music in their lives at a very early age. Mike's great grandfather and great uncle were both musicians. By 4th grade, Michael was introduced to instrumental music, starting with the trumpet (which lasted only a couple of weeks) and settling on learning to play the guitar. He could just pick up an instrument and quickly figure out how to play it: when Joanne was learning to play piano, he sat down one day and in less than five minutes he was playing "My Country Tis of Thee" note by note and in a half hour, notes and chords; Joanne quit piano. By the time Mike was 12, he had started playing an electric bass guitar and was in a band with Todd Johnson, Tim Armstrong and Jim Estok. They played gigs at teen parties. They didn't make much money but they had lots of fun. Mike's interest in music continued throughout high school and college. He played the string bass at McNamara HS and Largo HS in the orchestra, and the pit band for the Largo school musical "The Sound of Music". During his high school years, Michael was in the Prince Georges County All County Youth Band all three years performing an annual concert held at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. He attended Shenandoah College and Conservatory of Music in Winchester, Virginia graduating in 1982 with a Bachelor's degree in Music Education with a concentration in Contrabass. He played in the pit orchestra for the Shenandoah musical productions - Sweet Charity, Fiddler on the Roof, Carnival, and Hello Dolly. During the summer he was involved with the Wayside Theater musical productions of I Do, I Do in 1980, and The Amorous Flea in 1981. He performed with the conservatory symphony orchestra under the direction of Donald Black. He was a member of Alpha Phi Omega, a national service fraternity, and Phi Mu Alpha National Simfonia of America, a collegiate social fraternity for men who have a special interest in music. His graduation recital on March 21, 1982 was a performance that combined the Contrabass with an electric bass. Before taking his first job, Michael performed at the 1983 Maryland Renaissance festival as an actor in their production of Three Cuckolds playing the part of Leandro/Narrator. Michael started his career as a music teacher. He became the orchestral conductor for Strasburg Virginia's Middle and High Schools for eight years, until the music and arts programs were eliminated from the school curriculum. During that time he conducted the Shenandoah Valley Youth Orchestra in three concerts - June 8, 1986, Dec 14, 1986, and June 5, 1988. He was also the bass player for the Millbrook center chamber orchestra in Shepherdstown WV from 1983-1985. Michael was always working or volunteering. He babysat in the neighborhood when he was 12 years old. In high school, he was a YMCA summer camp counselor. He also was a Red Cross volunteer trainer, park ranger at Allan's Pond, made sandwiches at J-Mart, and worked at Wild World (pre-Six Flags) theme park. After the college years, on evenings and weekends, you could find Michael at the Strasburg Inn at the reservations desk, waiting on tables, or bartending. During the spring of 1993, Michael met his wife Monique Anderson at the Inn and they married in 1995. They did not have any children and were divorced in 2000. Michael was a fourth degree knight with the Sacred Heart Council Knights of Columbus in Bowie. He and David Gormley would work the Bingo nights. He played billiards, coming in second at a Knight's billiard competition. He also loved to ski. He took trips to Canaan Valley, Severn Springs, and Snowshoe as often as he could. When he could not find another job as a music teacher, Michael went to work for a bank, then an accounting firm, before landing a job with the District of Columbia government as a financial economist from 1997 to 2008. He specialized in the analyzing government operations and budgets looking at legislative impact. He worked on fiscal policies, capital improvements, and government budgeting. He earned 27 additional college credits in various financial and government courses from Bowie University, James Madison University, George Washington University, and George Mason University. Michael also sat on the Board of Trustees for the Northern Virginia Community College as the chair of the Budget Committee and was Board Chair for the City of Manassas Park Board of Education. Michael was an integral part of the rebuilding of Manassas Park City Schools and was loved and admired by his colleagues. He has been recognized with many awards, honors and Certificates of Achievement. Today, Friday October 31st, the flags in Manassas Park will fly at half mast in honor of his passing. Even when Michael became sick, he found humor in everything. In 2011, he was participating in an experimental treatment program conducted by the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville. He had 7 operations that summer, and because he was in this program, his operations were performed in the operating theater in the middle of the night so that doctors and students could view and learn. He would make comments after each surgery, asking whether or not he had given a good 'performance' that day. One of the operations was performed by a resident doctor. The operation went badly, with Michael having to have emergency surgery to repair what went wrong. The lead surgeon was so infuriated, that the resident was 'sentenced' to washing bed pans. That resident had to pass by Michael all day long as she washed those bed pans, and he took every opportunity to tease her about it. When you are that ill, laughter can be good medicine. During one of his hospital stays, the hospital chaplain who was a Catholic priest came to see him. While the chaplain was talking to Mike, he set up his crucifix, candles and chrism. Michael thought the chaplain was there to administer Last Rights, even though he was really there to administer the Blessing for the Sick. A little panicked, Mike says to the priest "Are you sure this is meant for me?" and the chaplain looks at his notes and said yes, that Mike was on the list. On October 27, 2014 Michael went home to God. He was on the list.