Oliver [Ollie] William Johnson was born in oil boom town Maud, Oklahoma on March 30, 1930 to George Henry Johnson and Elsie McGowan Johnson.  Until age 15 his family, including  his late younger brother Earl, lived on a chicken farm near Baltimore, Md. Ollie got fired from his first day on his first job. He had been mowing grass on a hot muggy summer day in the local cemetery when he ate his loving mother's heavy lunch and fell asleep under a tree. His mom, worried about his future, had cried and cried. No worry as family Christmas gifts -- a Gilbert Chemistry Set and a book about scientists-- had already hooked him on science.  The family moved to Fresno, California where he attended high school, another significant life impact, the multicultural student body: Armenians, Hispanics, and Asian students.

The Korean War started when he entered college, so he enlisted planning to serve as a radio technician. The recruiter decided, based on Ollie's single biology class,  he should be a Navy Corpsman. After training in emergency treatment, the Navy transferred him to the Marine Corps and shipped him off to Korea. He endured Pacific winter storms by subsisting on Oh Henry bars and canned fruit cocktail, plus he learned not to gamble when he lost his first monthly stipend in card games.  In his thirteen months in Korea he reflected on his future. On his return, he finished his BS degree at Fresno State and earned a Masters and Ph.D. at Oregon State University. In 1961, he accepted an instructor position in the Biology Department at Arizona State Teachers College [then only 2000 students], now Northern Arizona University.

His family then, wife Ginny and toddler daughter Stasi, moved to Flagstaff where at NAU he became a full professor (animal physiologist and herpetologist), and an emeritus professor upon his retirement.

Reflecting on his NAU days, he laughed recollecting in his early time at NAU when Flagstaff hospital called asking if the Biology Department wanted the skunk they'd found and anesthetized in the hospital's basement. NAU wanted its skull and hide, so Ollie sped up to the hospital in his VW bug, grabbed the bagged skunk tossed it in the well of the back window where Stasi liked to nap, raced back to the Biology Department upstairs to the only room with a huge freezer and dropped the bagged skunk in it before it came around. Then he noticed a professor and her students were agape. He apologized for the interruption and hastily left.

Later in his NAU career, he shared stories from the herpetology field trips he led to collect rattlesnakes in the boonies near Kingman.  He required the students eat barbecued rattlesnake which created a stir, but not as much as the year the students woke hysterical when they found rattlesnakes napping right under their sleeping bags.

After his divorce, he followed his interest in passive solar and visited solar sites in New Mexico. He designed a passive solar house and geodesic dome which he built himself in summers with help from NAU grad students. The house requires a half cord of wood for winter heat.

He started the first singles club in Flagstaff and met his present wife, Martha Blue, and her pre-school daughter Zoe at a picnic. His deviled eggs (the other men brought beer and chips) caught her attention.

Towards the end of his NAU career, he did a sabbatical in China where he collected salamanders on the Tibetan Plateau and studied their respiration. He'd sigh describing the feast of potato (rice did not grow at that elevation) dishes given him in a poor, remote northern Chinese village that had never before seen a white person.  At the banquet in the elderly village headman's home, the old man offered Ollie his stool, the only seating available. Ollie declined saying the honored guest in his country always stood. His China letters were edited into a memory book.

On his retirement, he started tour bicycling and kept it up despite the quadruple bypass he had a year after retirement. He biked Iowa's RAGBRAE several times, other state rides, the Natchez Trace and Santa Fe Trail, and Sweden, Denmark, and Holland. At 69, he bicycled from Escondido, California to St. Augustine, Florida.  He sailed his 21 foot Catalina at Lake Pleasant.

His volunteer work included Books for Kids, Friends of Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site, and the Flagstaff Family Food Kitchen.  He made a mean Vietnamese Spring Roll, Green Chili, and Mapo Dofu.

Most evenings he read, favoring mysteries, and he could not pass up a bookstore. He took up printmaking and photography at NAU and Anderson Ranch. He was always behind the camera at family events. When wintering at Lake Pleasant RV Park north of Phoenix in his last years, he performed as a comedian during their Karaoke events. He loved telling jokes there (and everywhere else), and cooked an annual Chinese feast for over 100 people at the Park. About 80, he was diagnosed with a stomach cancer, and later heart failure.

His daughter Stasi, her husband Andrew Redding, residents of Escondido, California fondly remember his whistling. Sometimes they said he'd throw in a hand or foot stomp and the word "pow". Stasi says he spent hours watching cartoons with her on Saturdays as she grew up and that he took every opportunity to have a laugh or tell jokes to his family, friends and the people he loved.

His grandson Ben Redding, who followed in Ollie's biology footsteps, and his wife Erin reside as well in Escondido. His niece Debbie (Johnson) Lokka and husband Kirk reside in Sebastopol, California, niece Ileen Johnson in Fresno, California, and nephew Tom Johnson in Modesto, California. His step-daughter Zoe and her husband Steve Lonetti reside in Flagstaff. Zoe describes Ollie as a person who brought out the best in others.

He was kind, forgiving, manly, generous with others. His far reaching mind was coupled with gentleness and humor.  He knew everything. Once a young Zoe asked her mom a question, then Zoe decided she'd wait till Ollie came home because he knew more. Too, Ollie was stubborn, single focused, a penny pincher with himself, and let's not forget, stubborn. He will always be Martha's heart throb.

At age 88 and in his last days, he dictated this lengthy obit which was finalized after he died on Sunday, September 16th at 11:55 p.m. at home. Take a moment and ponder some Ollie memory, funny or not.  Write out the memory and send it to his family or online at www.norvelowensmortuary.com . These will be gathered into a memory book for family and friends.

In his will, Ollie said that he had not died but merely changed his energy form within the universe and that his impact on the living stream of mankind had, hopefully, been a positive one as a son, brother, father, husband, uncle, lover, teacher, friend, and scientist. It was.

From a Tao meditation:

Upon completion comes fulfillment.
With fulfillment comes liberation.
Liberation allows you to go on.
Even death is not a true ending.
Life is an infinite continuation.