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Long-time joie de vivre “Madge Johnson shares one thing in common with such historical giants as British war hero Lord
Mountbatten, American novelists Thomas Wolfe and Margaret Mitchell, [and] composer Aaron Copland . . . ” said the Manteca Bulletin, California hometown newspaper of one of its own.
All were born in 1900.
Madge Wightman Johnson ’23 is also one of USC’s own, and while the above-mentioned luminaries sharing her birth year are alive in their art or books only, this vivacious 98-year-old is still making history.
In fact, she enjoyed her 75th class reunion last spring, attending the Half Century Trojans gathering on campus. It’s the third class reunion that Johnson has attended at USC in the last 15 years. She also made it to her 65th and 70th class reunions.
“But this is the one I’ve been waiting for,” she says. For her 75th, Johnson was also wearing, for the first time, her college ring. The ring was a Mother’s Day gift from her two children.
“She never got around to getting one, and she didn’t have the money then when she graduated,” says her daughter, Linda Johnson Kay. “We kind of figured she should have her ring now.”
Adam W. Herbert has earned the praise of faculty, students and the community as chancellor of the State University of Florida System. |
NOT ALL JOHNSON'S reunions have been so eventful. At the 65th reunion in 1988, there was just one other woman at the table reserved for the class of 1923, “and she fell asleep,” Johnson laughs.
USC students of the early 1920s might have thought they saw two Madge Wightmans around campus, and not just because she was an on-the-go physical education major. Her twin sister, Florence Wightman Rowland, also graduated in 1923, and became a writer. She passed away last year after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
Johnson went on to earn her master’s degree at Columbia University, and then taught at the University of Cincinnati and Mills College in Oakland.
“She spent the last 15 years of her career teaching physical education in the Oakland Public School System,” says her daughter. “With her credentials, she could have taught anywhere, but she chose the inner-city areas because she believed those kids needed quality teachers.”
Johnson went her own way in her personal life as well. A first marriage soon after college lasted less than a year. When she met her second husband, she was a 40-year-old divorced mother and career woman. Her husband was 22 and still in college. Despite the age difference, theirs was a happy and long (57 years) union.
“They always made that extra effort for the other person,” says Kay of her parents. “They had an unspoken way of showing each other that they care.” l
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