The initiator of the Fund
For Dr. Lee Z. Johnson, love for church ran very deep. The establishment of the Marlène F. Johnson Memorial Fund was a direct expression of this love. Dr. Johnson grew up in Havre, Montana, during the Great Depression and Second World War. He became a devoted Christian Scientist as a teenager. He once described being introduced to the depth and immediacy of the Bible's message through reading the Book of Job as a ninth-grader: "What a wonderful experience that was! Job was someone who had almost as many problems as I had. Always, though, he maintained his innocence..." He went on that he hadn't "quit loving and learning from Scripture ever since." He worked his way through the University of Montana as an English major, and gained a lifelong appreciation for scholarly endeavor in the process. Many years later he would write to one of his professors there, the noted scholar of American literature Leslie Fiedler: "You were just right for a lad off the prairie who was eager for doors to open but had had no real chance at literature... Please accept this as an honest word of gratitude from one of those western students in whose soul you lit a fire that has burned ever since...." After serving in the military during the Korean War, he moved to Boston to work for the denomination's Mother Church. He later earned a doctorate in sociology from Syracuse University and, in 1960, was appointed Archivist of The Mother Church. He brought both spiritual integrity and a new level of professionalism to archival operations in his work there over the next three decades. |
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