COLUMN: Johnson left Macon, but it never left him

Tom Johnson still has the pica pole from when he worked at The Macon Telegraph newspaper as a high school student in the 1950s.

If a wooden ruler can be a measure of a man’s success, Johnson can look back with a grateful heart. He carried it with him to every stop … from Macon to the University of Georgia journalism school, Harvard Business School, the White House, the LBJ Ranch, Dallas Times Herald, Los Angeles Times and CNN.

It is 92 miles from Johnson’s home in Buckhead — not far from the Governor’s Mansion — to the modest, two-bedroom house where he grew up on Columbus Road in West Macon.

His new memoir — “Driven:  A Life in Public Service and Journalism From LBJ To CNN’’ — is both a love letter and a thank-you note to the “town I still call home.’’

“My story began in Macon, Georgia, and it may very well end there,’’ Johnson writes. “I have asked that my ashes be scattered by my son on a small tract of Macon land where I lived as a child.’’

A few years ago, Johnson took his grandchildren to see the childhood home where his beloved dog, Sparky, is buried under a pecan tree in the yard. The graves of his parents, Wyatt and Josie Johnson, are a short distance across the road at Macon Memorial Park.

Johnson also drove his grandchildren down Cherry Street, where he pointed out the old Telegraph building. It was where he learned to keep a scorebook and the importance of spelling someone’s name correctly. 

It was where he earned his first byline and was taught the five-finger method of typing. At age 84, he still types that way – three on the right, two on the left. 

“My mother always told me, ‘Tommy, if you work hard and do right you can do almost anything you want to do in life,’ ’’ he said.

Once, on a trip to India, Johnson was introduced to Mother Teresa.  

But the real saint in his life was Josie Johnson.

He was her only child. She adored him. She had a number of  miscarriages during the first 18 years of her marriage.  Johnson was born at the Macon Hospital on September 30, 1941, two months before Pearl Harbor.

Josie was the embodiment of hard work. She was a clerk at Foy’s Grocery six days a week. Johnson later got his first job there. He stocked shelves, bagged groceries and ran the cash register. He also pumped gas from the two Sinclair pumps, checked every car’s tire pressure and looked under the hood.

His father, Wyatt, drank black coffee, smoked Lucky Strikes and tried to make the most of his third-grade education. He was a free spirit who rarely held a full-time job.

 Johnson would ride with his father to the Farmer’s Market in his red International pickup truck. They bought watermelons for 10 cents, then sold them for a quarter in Unionville. His father also purchased wood scraps to sell for firewood from a local company that made broom and shovel handles.

Ed Cagle, who was Johnson’s ninth-grade English teacher at Lanier Junior High, encouraged him to apply for a job at the newspaper. The Telegraph sports department needed “stringers” to cover high school games and answer the phones on busy Friday nights and weekends.

At the Telegraph, Johnson was mentored by a hall of fame of local journalists – Sam Glassman, Harley Bowers, Jim Chapman, Bill Ott, Joe Parham and Blythe McKay. They took a special interest in the hard-working young man. 

He worked on the school newspaper staff and became a leader in the ROTC program at Lanier – the all-white, all-boys high school.

“Those of us who lived on the west side felt a certain sense that our wealthier friends lived a better life,’’ Johnson said. “I had a real insecurity. I was embarrassed my dad was not a doctor or lawyer. I used to have him drop me off in his pickup truck a block from campus.’’  

Telegraph publisher Peyton Anderson once called him into his office and asked about his future plans. When Anderson learned Johnson’s family didn’t have the financial means to send him to college, he offered to pay his way to the University of Georgia and later Harvard Business School.

It was agreed that Johnson would return to Macon from college every weekend to work at the paper and full-time during the summers.

Johnson was loyal. Anderson became a father figure. It was no secret the publisher was grooming him to take the reins of the state’s second-largest newspaper.

Destiny had a different idea. At UGA, Johnson met his future wife, Edwina Chastain. She had dated Pat Dye, a Georgia football star who went on to become the head coach at Auburn. 

Edwina fell in love with Johnson, but she was lukewarm to a life of hot summers in Macon. She could never get the smell of the paper mill out of her nose.

As a young, married couple at Harvard, she encouraged him to apply to be a White House Fellow for the inaugural class in 1965. Johnson was one of only 15 selected.

It changed the trajectory of his career. He soon had a front-row seat to history in the press secretary’s office. LBJ considered him the son he never had. They even shared the same last name.

 One of the first White House staff members Johnson met was Macon native Rufus Youngblood, who was in charge of President Lyndon’s secret service detail. (When John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, it was Youngblood who pushed then-Vice President Johnson to the floorboard in the second vehicle to shield and protect him.) 

The roads back to Macon were connected in other ways. Ted Turner, whose first job was working for his father’s billboard company in Macon, later hired Johnson as president at CNN, where he  worked with Macon native Nancy Grace.

I was honored when Johnson asked me to serve as moderator for the discussion at his upcoming book signing at Mercer on November 5.  He called to congratulate me at every major step in my professional career.

When I visited him last week, I asked if Peyton Anderson was disappointed he did not return to Macon. He showed me a framed photograph Anderson had inscribed: “To Tom Johnson: My greatest pride is in your many outstanding accomplishments.’’

  There are those in the world who go on to fame and fortune and never reach back to honor their roots. They forget all those shoulders they stood on.

Tom Johnson left Macon, but it never left him.

Ed Grisamore was the 2024 recipient of the John Holliman Jr. Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. Tom Johnson was the first to receive the award in 1975.