Joseph F. Johnston Jr. ’54

Joe died Jan. 3, 2023.

At The Hill School, he was active in tennis and golf. Majoring in history, his senior thesis was on Edward Gibbon’s views of the rise and fall of nations, winning the Walter Phelps Hall Prize in European History, and graduating Phi Beta Kappa. He joined Key and Seal Club.

After service in the Army, he earned an M.A. in history and an LL.B at Harvard Law School in 1960, during which he married Rhonda Bronaugh in 1959.

Joe practiced corporate law and governance and taught part-time at the University of Virginia Law School. He served on the boards of several nonprofit organizations, with a particular interest in historic preservation. After moving to Virginia in 1978, he and Rhonda enjoyed spending time at his family’s ancestral farm on the upper James River. 

A Jeffersonian in outlook, his lifelong interest in the rise and fall of nations and in the role of government led to the publishing of The Limits of Government, warning of the risks to a free society of a failure to limit governmental power. Later he wrote an extension of his dissertation research, publishing The Decline of Nations: Lessons for Strengthening America at Home and in the World. At his death he was preparing an intellectual history of the left.

He is survived by his wife, Rhonda; and son Samuel ’82.