Life
Kelly Johnson was born in the remote mining town of Ishpeming, Michigan. His parents were Swedish, from the city of Malmö, county of Scania. Kelly was ashamed of his family's poverty, and vowed to return one day in prominence. Johnson was 13 years old when he won a prize for his first aircraft design. He worked his way through Flint Central High School and graduated in 1928, then went to Flint Junior College, now known as Mott Community College, and finally to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he received a Master's Degree in Aeronautical Engineering.
While attending grade school in Michigan, he was ridiculed for his name, Clarence. Some boys started calling him "Clara". One morning while waiting in line to get into a classroom, one boy started with the normal routine of calling him "Clara". Johnson tripped him so hard the boy broke a leg. The boys then decided that he wasn't a "Clara" after all, and started calling him "Kelly". The nickname came from the popular song at the time, "Kelly With the Green Neck Tie". Henceforth he was always known as "Kelly" Johnson.
In 1937, Johnson married Althea Louise Young, who worked in Lockheed's accounting department; she died in December 1969. In May 1971, he married his secretary Mary Ellen Elberta Meade of New York; she died after a long illness on October 13, 1980, aged 38. He married Meade's friend Nancy Powers Horrigan in November 1980.
His autobiography, titled Kelly: More Than My Share of it All, ISBN 0-87474-491-1, was published in 1985.
Johnson died at the age of 80 at St. Joseph Medical Center, after an illness that lasted for several years. He is buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery, Los Angeles, California.
Read more about this topic: Kelly Johnson (engineer)
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Have a care over my people. You have my people—do you that which I ought to do. They are my people.... See unto them—see unto them, for they are my charge.... I care not for myself; my life is not dear to me. My care is for my people. I pray God, whoever succeedeth me, be as careful of them as I am.”
—Elizabeth I (1533–1603)
““Life is a dangerous adventure,” says the American; and he is half right: life is dangerous, but it’s not an adventure.”
—José Bergamín (1895–1983)
“The new man is born too old to tolerate the new world. The present conditions of life have not yet erased the traces of the past. We run too fast, but we still do not move enough.... He looks but he does not contemplate, he sees but he does not think. He runs away from time, which is made of thought, and yet all he can feel is his own time, the present.”
—Eugenio Montale (1896–1981)