Alumnus Bob Johnson: brigadier general, electrical engineer and polo player at 89

The roar of the plane’s engines screamed in with the wind as recruits lined up in a rattling aluminum frame, tugging at strings on their packs to get their parachutes ready.

Bob Johnson (BSEE ’38) gritted his teeth a few places back in line as the jumpmaster decided who was going to take the leap first. Johnson had never parachuted before in his life, but to his horror, the jumpmaster’s eyes locked with his. 

“Hurry up, get over here!” 

Johnson finally got up to the exit and fumbled with his straps before realizing his pack was on backwards. The jumpmaster tore it off and set the pack on right, then delivered a sharp kick in Johnson’s back to send him tumbling into free-fall. Seventy years later, Johnson, 89, is full of amazing stories like these.

“So that was how I learned how to be a paratrooper, they kicked me out of the plane!” Johnson said, grinning. Johnson related these stories on a visit to ECE on September 26, while meeting faculty and staff members and touring the new building.

Since graduating from ECE, Johnson has seen action in the Pacific theatre, been promoted to the rank of brigadier general, had a fulfilling career as an electrical engineer, and, amazingly, played competitive polo until the age of 87. 

Going to college during the war, ROTC was mandatory for all members of Johnson’s class. He recalls full membership being optional, with additional training being required if a student wanted to further pursue the ROTC. Though the additional trials of membership were tough, sticking with it earned graduates an officer-level position in the military.

With a military draft around the corner after graduation, an ROTC membership meant all the difference for Johnson between a safer, specialized job and serving as cannon fodder on the front lines. Despite the moans of many of his classmates, he stuck with it, and upon graduating, joined a mounted unit in the National Guard that was deployed to the Pacific Theatre.

“I got in right at the tail end of the fight,” Johnson said. “When I showed up we fought the Japanese army out of the Philippines, then worked our way through the islands up to Japan.” 

While fighting in the Pacific, Johnson worked his way all the way up the ranks to a battlefield promotion by Douglas MacArthur to brigadier general, eventually leading a battalion of 500 soldiers in occupied Japan. 

During this period, Johnson remembers the mayor of the town driving to his office at 8 a.m. sharp every morning and requesting through an interpreter, “What do you wish to have today?” Johnson would reply with a request for supplies for his unit. When some free time came up, Johnson and some other officers cleared out an area for a game of polo and set up their unit’s horses, and citizens of the surrounding towns came to see the odd spectacle as Johnson and his teammates thundered through the fields. 

After the armistice with Japan was signed, Johnson returned to Chicago, where his wife Mary was waiting for him, and so was a job as an electrical engineer at power utility company Commonwealth Edison. He continued serving in the National Guard while working, and Mary passed away in 1984, after 42 years with Bob. 

A year later, Bob and his second wife Shirley met through mutual friends. Shirley remembers dating for more than two and a half years before he proposed to her. 

“He says he finally decided he couldn’t live without me,” Shirley said. “Actually, I think it was ‘cause he needed someone to help take care of his horses, so in the end you could say I got to be both a bride and a groom.”

Shirley noted that even at his age, Johnson continues to reveal new talents. 

“I had never known he could bowl until we had the grandchildren come and visit and they wanted to go bowling,” Shirley said. “But the second it was his turn, Bob shuffled down that aisle and the second ball he threw was a strike. I had never seen him bowl before in my life.”

Johnson’s physical well-being is considerable, and his fitness never ceases to surprise everyone around him. During one of his last polo matches, a horse buckled and threw Johnson off, and he landed hard with his back on the ground. Nonplussed, Johnson chuckled before remounting his horse and continuing to play.

In keeping up his body, Johnson also hasn’t neglected to keep his mind sharp, and, long past retiring, he continues to keep track of developments in ECE and regularly took community college courses in programming and hardware engineering until just a few years ago. 

When asked how he has managed to stay both physically and mentally fit for so long, Johnson parted with an inkling of his philosophy of life: “Stay on your feet and keep moving, because otherwise they’ll put you down.”