Jean A Johnson

Jean Alice Johnson, 79, of Lakewood Township Duluth departed to be with her Lord on Saturday, February 22, 2025, at Diamond Willow Assisted Living in Cloquet.

She was born on December 8, 1945, in Duluth to Einer and Alice (McMillan) Jensen. Growing up, she attended Duluth schools and graduated from East High. In 1964, at age 18 she married Roland Wayne Johnson 24 of Duluth who had fully captured her heart from the tender age of sixteen. They were married for more than sixty years when she passed.

Prior to their marriage, Jean worked as a bank teller and years later served in the retail industry at Kmart for more than twenty-five years. She ended her working career at Members Credit Union just before retirement.

Preceding her in death are her parents Einer and Alice Jensen, brother James Jensen and sister-in-law, Corrine Jensen. 

Jean is survived by her husband, Rollie; children, Shawn (Linda) Johnson, Kelly (Shamus) Higbee, and Jennifer (Leonard) Ronning; grandchildren, Jazmine (Sean) Hummel, McKala (Ty Rackliffe) Crotteau, Morgiana Bushway, Ian Johnson, Hunter Johnson, Jeremiah Johnson; great-grandchildren, Briggstin Johnson, Jemma Rackliffe, Thea Hummel.

Services will be held at 6 PM on Monday, March 10, 2025, at First Baptist Church in Two Harbors. 

Jean’s greatest joy and contentment were found intrinsically attached to her role as wife, mother, and homemaker and she took great pride in her work. She was a nurturer, protector, encourager, and advocate for many people far beyond her immediate household.

She will always be fondly remembered for her caring and giving nature. One way this was regularly demonstrated was by her habit of purchasing small inexpensive items and then presenting these to family members, friends, and other people she’d met explaining simply by saying “I just thought of you.”

Jean was compassionate and genuinely cared for others and loved deeply and openly for all to see. She wasn’t the least bit reluctant to embrace those she barely knew and when Jean hugged you, you knew it wasn’t a superficial gesture.

Friends of her children were seamlessly adopted as family and warmly embraced both when they entered her home and when they departed many times predictably with a package of freshly made homemade baked goods tucked under their arms.

Spouses of her children were always greeted and said goodbye to in the same manner to such a degree that it was suggested many times that she actually preferred her sons and daughters-in-law to the ones she physically gave birth to. Her capacity to love and show love to others was apparently limitless.

Her kitchen was the headquarters for Jean’s favorite “mission field”- service to others. She may well have been incapable of baking a dozen cookies, a single pan of bars, or a lone batch of her hand-kneaded dinner roll buns. It was commonplace for her to make dozens of cookies of various flavors and to bake them batch after batch at times for several days. Afterward, they were joyfully distributed to family and friends.

Martha Stewart is merely an amateur.

However, when Christmastime approached, she decided that it was time to get serious about baking. Down to the basement, we’d lug up her industrial-sized commercial mixer that conservatively weighed seventy pounds alone not to mention the heavy-duty stand it was securely bolted to. Awestruck we’d witness this monster consuming immense quantities of flour, sugar, eggs, and other components, and feel the kitchen floorboards vibrate and shake as it churned out the bases for her sweet creations.

Showing her love on a grand scale- Jean Johnson style.