William Cumming Johnson Jr. ’25

Bill Johnson was born June 26, 1904 in Memphis, and attended University School there. A lifelong Quaker, he died in Oberlin, Ohio, May 10, 1995.

At Princeton, he earned a B.S. and was elected Phi Beta Kappa. A member of the soccer and wrestling teams, he also played in the university orchestra and was treasurer of Whig and a member of the Speakers' Assn. and Gateway. He later earned an electrical engineering. degree at Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst. and a postgraduate certificate in engineering at GE, where he worked for seven years.

He then taught at Rensselaer and Virginia Polytechnic for several years before moving to Goodyear Aerospace Corp. in Akron, where he was involved in research, gaining a patent for an airship-enclosed radar, and developing a method for calculating stresses in helicopter blades. After retiring from Goodyear, he taught engineering courses at Kent State, retiring from there in 1974.

He married Mayo Crew in 1926, and they had three children: Kenn Harvey, Carel Crew McCafferty, and EveAnne Kulberg; there are 13 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren.

He was interested in genealogy and volunteered at Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland.

The Class of 1925