Janice L. Johnson

A woman who rarely sat still, and who loved to create order out of chaos, Janice Johnson made sure she was always busy.  She worked almost all of her life, and loved all of her jobs, from counter help at a hamburger stand as a teen, to room mother for her sons, to data processing liaison and billing clerk.

A private person who could sometimes come across as remote, she quietly paid it forward - helping as a trustee for disabled people, adopting rescue dogs, writing letters to store managers to acknowledge employees who had done a good job.

She could not stay away from work, putting things in order at the Gladstone Senior Center not long before her death of COPD, at age 74, on Feb. 14, 2016.

Janice was born in Minot, N.D., on April 1, 1941, to Bud Slauter, a dry cleaner, and his wife Irene, and was soon joined by little sister Judy. They lived a frugal life, and Janice learned her lifelong work ethic from her mother.   In 1944 the family moved to Portland for her father's wartime work.  Janice was in the second graduating class of Madison High School in 1959.

Discovering that she had a real head for numbers and for organizing, she took classes in the EDP (electronic data processing) field. After a brief first marriage in the 1960s,   she met future husband Bob Johnson at a friend's wedding in 1968. They married in 1969 and she helped put him through law school working for Farmers Insurance. Later, she worked for U.S. National Bank.

She and Bob adopted two infant sons, Mike in 1971, and Derrick in 1973.They raised their family in Milwaukie and had lived in the same house since 1973.   Rules were strict.  She stressed to them the importance of doing the right thing:  paying something if you owed it, never stealing, cleaning up after yourself, keeping everything in its place.  She herself had her California Closets meticulously organized, and the cleaning lady said Janice's house was the cleanest she had ever worked in.

She was a stay-at-home mother for a few years, worked part-time, reported for duty as a room mother for her sons' classrooms, then worked for many years at Oak Lodge Water as a billing clerk.

She retired in 2008 at her husband's request, so they could travel more. She was first diagnosed with COPD seven years ago, and it prevented her from flying.

Never much of a cook, or much of an eater - she was proud of her tiny 115-pound, 5-foot-1, size zero figure -- she was fond of her husband's cooking, especially twice-cooked chicken. She enjoyed crafts, especially making pine cone trees and tole painting, cleaning up the yard, pruning the rhodies and even doing the power washing by herself.

Bob and Janice traveled to Mexico every year for about 25 years, especially to Puerto Vallarta, and also traveled to Hawaii.   A trip to New Zealand was a favorite, but it was a trip to visit St. Petersburg, Russia, to visit her son, then an exchange student, that turned out to be the surprise highlight of her travels.

After she retired she continued volunteering at the Clackamas County Social Security office serving as a trustee for two disabled women, and at the Gladstone Senior Center until six months ago, finding odd jobs to do -- working as receptionist, or wrapping the silverware. If she ran out of things to do, she would go find someone else, to see if she could help them.

Janice is survived by her husband, Bob; son, Mike (daughter-in-law Wynn) and son, Derrick (daughter-in-law Michelle); and two grandchildren, Savanna and Nicolas.