Linnea Johnson
September 22, 1946 – April 20, 2013

The memorial service for Linnea was held on Nov. 2, 2013, the weekend following Linnea’s favorite holiday, All Holy Eve/ Samhain/ Halloween, at the home Linnea shared with her life-partner Cheryl Long, in Topeka, Kansas. Forty or more family members and friends attended from Kansas, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Guatemala, and many more sent notes of commemoration and love. The program included readings of Linnea’s poems, with intervals of music she loved. (This link is to The Memorial Program.)

The Ingevald Spelman violin quartet of Byron Wiley, Theresa Martin, Carolyn Young, and Suzy Bennett played traditional Swedish music, and the KC duet Lynn and Martha sang a variety of ballads. After the service and into the night, the celebration of Linnea’s life continued, with shared food and photos and memories, tears, laughter, and music, as old friends and acquaintances and strangers connected and reconnected, which is what Linnea always wanted those she loved to do.

Cheryl sent this note to family and friends a few days after Linnea died:

My thoughts three days after she died:
It’s Tuesday, April 23; Linnea is being cremated this morning. Enormous snowflakes have begun coming down outside as Mr. Bunny and I eat breakfast by candlelight, at dawn.

Elegant, cold, icy snow has arrived to finally quench her fire.

As I sat looking out the window, a bluebird came and sat on the feeder, then on the peak over the gate in the backyard. The phoebe came too – usually I only see her down by the barn. Then they were gone, and the snowflakes grew bigger and bigger… and bigger.

I opened a handful of condolence cards, including a green heron from Bryan. L and I loved to watch them feeding along the shore at dusk, at the cottage in Maine. And when there was water in our pond here in Topeka, the green heron visited daily, always squawking at me as she glided in to feed on the spring peepers.

Another card depicted a dahlia – pink with golden center – exactly like the ones L and I had seen on our last trip East, on a remarkable footbridge edged with flower beds – I forget what town we were in, but the bridge was next to a Swedish weaving workshop where L had hoped to return to, to attend classes.

Dahlias were one of Linnea’s favorite flowers. My friend Will Weaver breeds them, and had named one for me last year; I had been looking forward to growing it this year and showing it to Linnea.

The dahlia card came with a quotation from Barbara Kingsolver:

In my own worst seasons I’ve come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window…the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, I have taught myself joy, over and over again.

Recovering from a stroke–seems about right.

The giant snowflakes have stopped. Mr. Bunny seems very sad today, following me everywhere as I move around the house, his tail down even when I coo at him.

There are just no words to say how much I miss her.

Here is the obituary Linnea wrote:

Linnea Johnson was born and grew up Swedish in Chicago. She was a published poet, essayist, fiction writer, watercolorist, photographer, and political activist. She earned a BA and a PHD in English, and an MA in Writing and Women’s Studies. She was married twice and gave birth to two children. Her best and longest relationship was with her life-partner, Cheryl Long, and with her many dear friends whom she will miss more than life itself.

Johnson was part of “Jane,” the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union (CWLU) Abortion Counseling Service. She co-founded The Women’s Journal Advocate in Lincoln, Nebraska. She lobbied for open-records adoption reform, the passage of the ERA, and for other human rights initiatives. She co-hosted a Women in the Arts radio show. She was elected delegate to a White House Conference on the Family and taught English courses, Women’s, and American Studies courses during her decades of university and college teaching, in Nebraska, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. She taught writing and privately mentored throughout her life. A reading of a cycle of poems in play form, Swedish Christmas, became a CD and a performance piece. She is included in Barbara Love’s book, Feminists Who Changed America. She is ‘Lydia’ in Laura Kaplan’s book about the CWLU Abortion Counseling Service. She is author of two full-length books of poems as well as several chapbooks; her poetry, essays, and fiction are published in literary periodicals and anthologies.

Here are memories written by some of her friends. We hope others will add their memories in comments on various pages of this website or as blog entries. If you have pictures you would like to share, we can post them, too. Just contact us at linneajohnsonauthor@gmail.com.

From Reid Kirschenman
Linnea meant a lot to me. She was my loyal friend for more than 45 years. A friendship that endured over decades and geography, and the only friendship that survived two divorces. She was always encouraging and supportive, like no one else has ever been.

I’m sure others have written about the Thanksgiving dinners: authentically warm and convivial times with our real family and friends. But one of my favorite memories was from the 70’s when Sharon Yahnke hosted a pig roast out in the woods, and invited a bunch from the local biker gang. Unfortunately, it rained the whole day, but several of us had a jolly time playing games in a tent and making rude jokes about the bikers. Out of ear shot, of course. I still have that tent, and with a few of Linnea’s cigarette burn holes for remembrance.

She was often withering in her criticism of almost everything and everybody: friends, lovers, partners, husbands, patriarchy, men in general, children, politicians, authors, buildings, and household appliances were all targets for her wit. But always with a good-natured, over-the-top sarcasm that made it seem okay, and always entertaining. We could keep each other in stitches for hours.

She was a champion of people’s rights, and especially women’s rights, of course. She was the consummate iconoclast, and in the last few years, my fellow zealous anti-theist. Yet Linnea could be as sentimental as a child, a sucker for a kitty, or anything pink and fluffy. Almost every year, I got a card, letter, or email on my birthday. I never once remembered hers.

When I left to teach in Moscow in 2003, she told me to come back and visit her in Kansas. I said, “What if I come back with a Russian wife?”

“I don’t care if you come back married to an orangutan, come back and see me,” she said.

I miss her terribly.

from Nancy Ezold
My memories of Linnea, as you well know, are primarily the memories of her being wounded by gender discrimination but emboldened to successfully take on the wrong as a battle not only for herself but for other women. Sex discrimination has not dissipated since her fight and won’t in our lifetimes, but each woman who resists makes her indelible mark; and collectively, slowly, change occurs. We are all indebted to Linnea for fighting, successfully, the good and noble fight, and I wish I could join you to tell her friends that, in person.

from Deborah Kirschenmann
I can’t help thinking of Linnea without thinking of my son Gideon who died in 2008. I think of them together now (in the sky, as my 5-year-old grandson says), playing Scrabble and having intense discussions. Linnea was one of the few people that could beat him in Scrabble and I’m sure that was vice versa. They were very evenly matched and I think equally competitive.

Linnea was one of the few people I knew I could call at any time and rage about something political and she would know exactly what I was talking about and nearly always was correspondingly outraged. I couldn’t call her without having a minimum of an hour to spare, because it was impossible to get through all the issues in any less time.

As acerbic and critical as she was about the people in power, she was the opposite with the people she loved and would do anything for them to be of help. And the holidays – she loved holidays that included lots of baking, lots of friends and family, and hours of fascinating discussions. Everyone who gathered for her Thanksgiving weekends considered it a special time, and we were all disheartened when we all moved too far away to keep up the weekends every year.

Even after she and my father divorced, we stayed friends. She was, after all, closer to my age than my father’s, and closer to my temperament. She also gave me my only blood sibling and I just want to say, “thank you Linnea, it’s a gift that is treasured.” In the last years of her life, I knew she was having problems with her health. But she never wanted to talk about it, as if focusing on those problems gave them too much reality. She would rather talk about the issues of the day or family matters or things that made her feel alive. So it is an understatement to say I was surprised and shocked when I heard the news that she had died. Someday I will join her and maybe she and my son will be kind enough to let me have a chance to play Scrabble with them.

from Doug Sheafor, glassblower
As I think of Linnea, I think of light. Upon meeting her, it took no time to be Dazzled by the light of her wit, her intelligence and her passionate caring those in need. Equally blazing was her disdain for those who valued profit for the rich over the needs of the less fortunate (i.e., conservative politicians). While Linnea will always live in our memories, those of us who knew and loved her could use a more concrete representation of her colorful, brilliant soul.

I have therefore attempted to represent her memory in an object made of a substance that embodies light, glass. Since in her art and dress Linnea seemed to favor all colors, I have chosen a mixture of 10 colors. The form is a Dragon’s Tear —the tear for our sorrow and the many colors for Linnea’s brilliant and colorful personality. It is lighted from within as Linnea’s light shone from within.

Linnea, we miss you and will never forget you.

 

from Judy Gibson
Things I loved about Linnea:

• She introduced me to lesbian literature, including the first poetry I loved.
• She was formidable.
• She was generous.
• She was political – every minute – and never gave up.
• She was funny.
• She was smart.
• She was supportive and loving to Sarah.
• She was a good and loyal friend in so many ways.
• She was open to learning.
• She never stopped trying to convert others.
• She loved the Sandhill Cranes.
• She loved frippery, e.g., for New Year’s Eve.
• She was curious.
• She was a really good teacher and loved teaching.
• She was a romantic.
• She always sent beautiful birthday and anniversary cards.
• She was over-the-top about almost everything she cared about.

from Barbara DiBernard
Dear Cheryl,
I haven’t written to you yet with my deep, deep condolences about Linnea’s death and my memories of her. I hope you excuse the typed copy—my handwriting is nigh onto illegible these days. These are not all, but some of the memories of Linnea I want to share right now.

When I think of Linnea, I think of passion, energy, creativity, and life force. I first met her through the English Department, when she was a TA and I was a newly arrived faculty member. Some of the Linnea stories I love have to do with her refusing rigid departmental strictures and driving Fred Link crazy. At one point, Fred issued an edict that we could only have a set number of copies of letterhead paper a day (1, I think). So Linnea promptly asked for one every single day, completely undermining the system and showing how ridiculous it was. Another time, she ordered many, many books for her women’s lit course because these books simply were not available in Lincoln otherwise, and students needed access to them. Another edict from the chair soon followed, dictating the number of books we could order! Of course, Linnea got around that by ordering many of the books as “not required.” Then he had to make a new rule, etc. It was a glorious process to behold.

When I realized that the woman I was living with, whom I refer to as “the terrible Kate,” was not honest, I asked her to move out during spring break. Linnea invited me to come stay with her in Illinois. I will never forget her kindness and generosity to me. We had a wonderful time—of course, she took me to all sorts of “off the beaten path” sights. I remember a cemetery with a headstone that had an engraving of a one-legged roller skater. You can imagine how Linnea loved that. She was the perfect balance of tour guide and caring friend — letting me talk when I wanted to, but also realizing that I needed to have some fun.

When I was moving into a new apartment in around 1980, my friends threw me a surprise housewarming. While Linnea called me from the McDonald’s on Cornhusker asking if I could come rescue her because she had car trouble, they all gathered at my apartment (Now, how did Linnea get me to drive there? Well, you know how convincing she could be).

I have such warm memories of the times we visited you in your Topeka home—the beauty of the home you created together, the wonderful meals, our never-ending talks. And our brunches at the Lied Lodge—sometimes we would stay until late afternoon. So much to talk about, so much laughter, so much love.

Through my missing her I cannot imagine your sadness and grief. You were a wonderful partner, loving and tender and always there. We will be together soon to share our stories and tears and laughter.

From Lucia and Peter Patrone
I’m sorry we won’t be able to attend the gathering for the wonderful woman that Linnea was. She wrote a special poem for our wedding and we will always cherish that. Linnea will always be my fairy godmother and the fond memories and her giggle will forever remain in my heart.

Love to you Cheryl

From Janet Coleman
Linnea was my friend! I only occasionally saw her in the last “umpteen” years, but she was still my friend. My occasional visits or emails with her in recent years were a continuing reminder what she meant to me.

First of all, Linnea was the very best teacher that I ever had. I’ve had teachers all the way through public schools, bachelors, masters, and about half of a PhD program. Linnea was not a teacher to me in any of those groups. She was a wonderful teacher in couple of groups of which I was a member.

First of all, she was a member along with about 10 other women. This group just talked and talked and laughed and laughed. It no longer exists, but I still count many of those women as my friend. Most importantly, I was a member of a group of four women who wrote poetry. For several years, we met together on a weekly basis. I would have never come to that group without a poem that I had written. I received so much encouragement from that group and particularly from Linnea. Beyond writing poetry, we often bought a cheese cake, cut it into four pieces and ate every bite before we proceeded with poetry. The four of us published one book together, and it was wonderful although not a public success. With three of us, we published an additional book of poems. When Linnea moved away, we briefly tried to keep going, but without Linnea, it just wasn’t the same.

I will always remember Linnea. She was filled with insight. She was filled with friendship for me and others. She was always Linnea – a superb teacher, an extraordinary friend, and one whose memory will linger forever with me.

from Heather Booth
Thank you for remembering Linnea. Though I can’t join you that day, I also mourn for her and feel her loss.

She was a joy as a partner in the early women’s movement.

She brought such a positive spirit.

She was fearless and willing to take the risks that would move our movement forward.

She was willing to do whatever work was needed.

And she was such a kind and good and caring friend.

We are better for having known her.

And hope to carry on her spirit.

from Tom Chittick
Who’d ‘a thunk it that Linnea and I would have been friends for that time we spent together at Muhlenberg College. For me it was a brief four years; 1989-1993. I was Chaplain of the college and Linnea was in the English Department. She was not into church and I had my reservations about Swedes. But we became acquainted and then friends along with Cheryl. And here are three things I think on most when remembering Linnea.

I think it was because of student concern that the college organized a teach-in about Iraq. It was a two-day event with classes called off. It was to conclude with a service in the chapel, something I shoehorned my way into. As it turns out, Desert Storm commenced that day and so the chapel service turned into an all night vigil. But it began with music and readings and the like. I can still see Linnea reading the peace poem she had selected for the occasion. I had asked her to be a reader because of her great peace advocacy. I trust many students remember that moment as well.

Another year the Cathedral Church of St John the Divine in New York City was hosting a full reading of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Linnea organized a bus trip into the city for her poetry class students and invited me to go along.

What a moment it was when at one point Alan Ginsburg read a portion of Whitman’s masterpiece. Ginsburg in a cathedral! And he commanded the moment and the conveyance of Whitman’s passion with magnificence, framed as he was by the rough, and as yet unfinished, massive pillars at the transept of the nave. I can’t imagine any of those students forgetting that occasion or not feeling grateful for Linnea’s invitation.

My last year at Muhlenberg I “Mr. Mommed” it when my wife at the time took a teaching position out of state. My oldest son needed/wanted some use of my old car. When Linnea heard of the arrangement Nathan and I worked out, she loaned me her second unused Volvo for the whole year. Mostly I bicycled to campus, but to have the use of a car gave me such a sense of freedom. And it took the sting out of a sometimes-prickly time with a teenage boy and his dad. I’m guessing Nathan doesn’t remember this at all.

But I sure do.

I remember Linnea as a generous person; generous with her students, with her professional commitments, and with me. Muhlenberg was fortunate to have her briefly on the faculty and I was fortunate to have her as a friend.

From Barbara Crooker
Linnea was my poetry friend when she lived in the Lehigh Valley (PA). She had a little afternoon “poetry salon” about once a month in her darling house by the little stream, and it was always something I looked forward to. It wasn’t a critique circle, but rather, a space where we read to each other, and celebrated poetry, both ours, and others.

After she moved to Kansas, we’d get together for lunch when she was coming through the Valley. When she was in Maine for that brief spell teaching, I was lucky enough to have a reading there (University of Southern Maine), so I stayed with Linnea in the house she was renting by the ocean. It was difficult at that point for her to get around, but still, we did the following: had tall glasses of local beer and oysters at a waterfront pub when I arrived, went to see the lighthouses that Hopper painted, went to the reading and reception in the university’s art gallery (out for fried clams afterwards), and then she tried to grant me my wish, which was to see a moose. First we went to an animal rescue sanctuary, where I saw a baby moose (pretty good-sized), and then to a candy store, which featured a full grown moose–made out of chocolate! And then I wrote this poem for her, which is in my third book:

STREWN
It’d been a long winter, rags of snow hanging on; then, at the end
of April, an icy nor’easter, powerful as a hurricane. But now
I’ve landed on the coast of Maine, visiting a friend who lives
two blocks from the ocean, and I can’t believe my luck,
out this mild morning, race-walking along the strand.
Every dog within fifty miles is off-leash, running
for the sheer dopey joy of it. No one’s in the water,
but walkers and shellers leave their tracks on the hardpack.
The flat sand shines as if varnished in a painting. Underfoot,
strewn, are broken bits and pieces, deep indigo mussels, whorls
of whelk, chips of purple and white wampum, hinges of quahog,
fragments of flat grey sand dollars. Nothing whole, everything
broken, washed up here, stranded. Light pours down, a rinse
of lemon on a cold plate of oysters. All of us, broken, some way
or other. All of us dazzling in the brilliant slanting light.

RIP, dear friend. I sure do miss you!

From Maria Mullinaux (Lemon) Cadwallader
June 2, 2013
Linnea died 10 weeks and 2 days ago, leaving a hole in the world and in our hearts that feels like it will never mend. She gave so much to the world at large and to so many of us individually, we can’t just shift things around to fill in the space she occupied. She was so productive – artistically, politically, personally – yet in the last years of her life, felt so keenly that she had not done enough because so much was left to do.

Linnea wrote at least one play, more than one novel, numerous short stories, dozens of essays, and hundreds of poems. She drew and painted and made paper and photographed and had a lot more she wanted to say and do and create. She also wanted all of it “out there” in the world. We’re trying to make at least that wish of hers come true by publishing everything on the internet, but I’m also remembering her constant pleas to all of us to make our personal truths known, to speak up, speak out, and speak truth to power.

Linnea had so much courage. In the last few weeks, and again today in Texas, men in the House of Representatives and in state legislatures have renewed their attack on women’s right to control our own bodies, passing and trying to pass bills that would force us to carry pregnancies to term, close women’s health clinics, force us to endure invasive medical procedures, force teachers and doctors to lie to women about reproductive health issues. Texas women and supportive men are rising in protest, and I hear Linnea’s voice rising with theirs. After all, Linnea risked far more working with Jane in Chicago to help women get safe abortions before Roe v. Wade than any of us must risk to speak out about these current and ongoing attempts to turn back the clock.

The first conversations I had with Linnea were political. When we met in graduate school in the early 70s, I was a feminist who knew little about women’s history and women’s writings. Linnea filled my arms with books, my ears with encouragement to write and speak my own truths, and my eyes with constant examples of her speaking truth to power. She knew how to occupy space so that everyone had to listen. She was amazing.

I did not have such courage, and without Linnea’s inspiration, my favorite photo would not exist. It is of my daughter at a reproductive rights rally in Nebraska, objecting to a state attempt to thwart the Roe v. Wade ruling, holding a sign that reads “EVERY CHILD A WANTED CHILD.” I was standing beside her with my own sign, so I could take that photo, but Linnea made me bold enough to be there. My daughter had begged to come along.

Linnea and I kept talking politics, of course, but we also talked about everything else. We read and critiqued each other’s writing. We worked on curricula together. We shared books and recipes and worries about kids and husbands and lovers and potential lovers and illnesses and parents and job insecurities and aging. She moved to Pennsylvania (I was lucky enough to be able to visit her there once), and we talked on the phone, and Linnea wrote letters and I called her when I got them, and she forgave my phobia about writing letters. She visited me in Nebraska. She and Cheryl moved to Kansas, and they came to my wedding to Dean, and eventually Dean and I were lucky enough to be able to visit them in Kansas fairly often, and they came to Nebraska to visit, and that meant Linnea also had given Dean and me the great gift of having Cheryl to know and love.

Linnea loved Dean and my kids and my dogs and my cats and my grandkids and my horses. She was always telling me to write more, to quite hiding what I wrote. I loved Linnea and her kids and her cats and still love Cheryl and her dog Bunny, who was Linnea’s one and only dog, whom she found abandoned on the road and rescued in spite of his reluctance to be caught, as she rescued so many of us in her too-short life.

I am more grateful to Linnea than I will ever be able to say.

April 19, 2014
It is now a year since Linnea died, and there is still a huge hole in the world and still much left to be done. It’s been personally comforting to set up this web site and working on it continues to be, going through her computer files and printouts and publications and photos, sorting and organizing and posting as webmaster. I love her poetry more, the more I read it. But in other ways it isn’t comforting to do this work, because it makes me think about what I wish I had said to her or done with her, but didn’t.

And here we are, long after Roe v. Wade, the same fight on our doorsteps and being waged around the world, wherever powerful men feel entitled to make the decisions for everyone. Like Linnea, I believe their agenda is clear: they want to turn back the clock, to keep women under their control, keep us and the not-powerful uneducated and working and in poverty, keep us from voting, keep us too hungry and tired and frightened and stupefied to rise up against them. They are robber barons, whether they cloak themselves as businessmen or bankers or wall street traders or religious leaders or politicians, and whether or not they also war against each other. They care most or only about their own comfort and power, and they will keep taking and using and laying waste until the planet is uninhabitable – unless we stop them.

Linnea, dear Linnea, I miss you, I miss your voice shouting truth to power. I still don’t have your courage, but I am too old and miss you too much to stay quiet. And I’m hoping that everyone who knew you and everyone who comes to know you by reading your work and everyone we all can touch will remember your pleas to speak up, speak out, speak truth to power. We must.