Dr. Wiley Johnson

1930 - 2006

By Jon Cooner

Editor’s Note:  Dr. Wiley C. Johnson PhD was the Agronomist and Director of Forage for Whitetail Institute for many years. Internationally renowned in his field, he created the original Imperial Whitetail Clover formula and went on to develop and improve many other Institute products. He died July 20, 2006 in Auburn, Alabama where he enjoyed a distinguished career at Auburn University. 

On July 20, 2006 I was returning from a Whitetail Institute business trip out of state.  The trip itself had been productive, but the return leg would prove sadly eventful. 

A severe thunderstorm had broken just as I’d left the Interstate and dropped onto Alabama’s back roads toward home.  Central Alabama had been unusually dry throughout the summer, and as the first few drops hit my windshield I found myself staring at them with a bit of wonder.  The drops quickly turned into a raging downpour, and as the heavens seemed at once to pour out all the moisture they had held back for months, I quickly reached to start the windshield wipers.  On the first pass, the driver’s-side wiper malfunctioned, continuing past the windshield’s edge and wedging itself into the gap between the truck and the side mirror where it uselessly twitched back and forth.  Left without forward visibility, I immediately pulled to the shoulder of the road and waited for the weather to improve.  After a while, the downpour showed no sign of abating, so I got out, fixed the wiper in the rain and resumed my journey.    

As I got underway again, I took an inventory of my soaked clothing and was aggravated that, after having not rained much for three months, it would rain now – right when I did NOT need it.  Shortly thereafter, I received a cell-phone call from the Institute’s Director of Operations, and I immediately launched into a tirade about my bad luck.  He allowed me to vent before telling me that our Institute agronomist Dr. Wiley Johnson had passed away. 

The news floored me.  I had just seen “Dr. J” the very morning I had left on my trip.  He had stood in the kitchen of our office preparing his lunch and, with his customary broad smile, wished me good luck.  And now … he was gone.   

As I drove on, I felt more than a little guilty over my self-centeredness.  The rain would be a welcome relief to farmers and planters, but I had seen it only as a matter of personal discomfort.  Also at that very moment, Dr. Johnson’s family and close friends were probably just beginning to absorb his loss, and I felt embarrassed at having been upset by something as trivial as wet clothes.   I spent the rest of the trip home in silence thinking about that, about Dr. Johnson, and about how much he meant, personally as well as professionally, to everyone who had the pleasure of associating with him.    

Dr. Johnson was a gifted educator and a scientist’s scientist.  During his distinguished, thirty-five-year career as a Professor of Agronomy at Auburn University, Dr. Johnson served on numerous graduate-student committees and was highly respected as an advisor of Auburn’s undergraduate agronomy majors and the Auburn Ag Ambassadors.  He received numerous college and university awards for his dedicated teaching and student-advisory programs, and he found great personal gratification in the level of professional excellence achieved by his former students, who comprise an impressive list of Who’s Who in Southern Agriculture.

Of the many stories I have heard about Dr. Johnson, the one that has stuck in my mind is a conversation Ray Scott told me about shortly after Dr. Johnson’s death.  Ray said “I asked Wiley one day, ‘Wiley, in all your years as a teacher, how many students did you fail?’  Wiley responded, ‘I didn’t fail any of them - I taught them.”   Dr. Johnson’s reply speaks volumes about his character and his quality as an educator.  Enough said.         

After his retirement from Auburn University in 1992, Dr. Johnson continued his professional career as Director of Research and Plant Breeding for the Whitetail Institute of North America.  In his own way, Dr. Wiley Johnson was almost as much an icon of the Whitetail Institute as is its founder, Ray Scott.  It was Dr. Johnson who Scott contacted in the late 1980s with the idea of creating as perfect a perennial deer forage as possible.  The collaboration resulted in the development of the Whitetail Institute’s first proprietary clover, and the rest, as they say, is history.  The forages Dr. Johnson helped develop for the Institute during his years as its Director of Research and Plant Breading have been planted by sportsmen and managers on over a million acres throughout North America and continue to be the backbone of the Institute’s deer-forage blends, which remain the industry standard. 

Although I had not known Dr. Johnson as long as others in our company, I learned a great deal from him, both professionally and personally.  From a professional standpoint, I often took advantage of his wealth of knowledge about agriculture and appreciated that he always took time to help me understand things, no matter how rudimentary.  He freely shared his substantial knowledge, openly and without considering it proprietary.  Perhaps this is one reason he was such an outstanding educator; it is certainly one reason I learned so much from him and respected him so much.  I also consider it to Dr. Johnson’s great credit that he gave his opinions without qualification – he was not one to waffle.  If asked a question that could be answered with “Yes” or “No,” then that was the answer he gave.  That courageous quality is rare these days.   

Dr. Johnson’s articles also helped me write more effectively.  Our company’s publication, Whitetail News, is printed three times each year, and Dr. Johnson contributed one or more articles to nearly every issue.  Often, he was asked to write articles about such things as soil pH, lime activity and sprayer calibration—topics that most would find extremely cumbersome.  However, he was gifted at writing such articles in a way that made them enjoyable as well as informative.

Even with all his professional accomplishments, Dr. Johnson’s greatest impact in my own life was more personal than professional.  I’m sure he did not realize this impact, since we only encountered one another in a professional setting and interacted about business.  Instead, he stood as an example from which I could learn.     

Others here at the Institute knew Dr. Johnson longer than I, and everyone seems to have his own favorite Dr. Johnson story.  I examined those stories again in my mind as I drove, and it occurred to me that while all were humorous, none had even the slightest tinge of baseness, and that, I believe, is a testament to Dr. Johnson’s character - he was unquestionably both a gentleman and a gentle man.   

As a matter of fact, no one I know can recall Dr. Johnson ever having been anything other than thoroughly gracious, and anyone who ever experienced the directness of his gaze, firmness of his handshake and warmth of his smile will find that surprising.   His appearance and actions were simple and quiet, with no effort wasted on the egocentric; one might not even realize that Dr. Johnson was working around the office on a particular day until he passed by on the way to the greenhouses or stopped to enjoy his modest, customary lunch of a sandwich and an apple in the company kitchen. 

His activities outside his professional work with the Institute also show the kind of man he was - loving and committed to the things that matter in life.  Dr. Johnson was the grandfather of four, father of two and husband of one. 

He first met Elizabeth Ann Calvin, the young lady who was to become his wife, when he was only 15 years old, and they courted during buggy rides through the mountains of western North Carolina.  They married after college and remained together ever since.   

Dr. Johnson was only thirteen years old when he lost his own father, and the responsibility of being the only male in the family helped shape his character.  A testament to Dr. Johnson’s own quality as a father is evident in the remarks his son, Dr. Carroll Johnson, made at father’s graveside: 

“On Saturday morning, I spent a couple of hours cleaning up the yard at Dad’s house in Auburn, and I needed a pair of work gloves.  I had left mine at home in Georgia, but I found a pair of Dad’s work gloves in his truck.  Work gloves are like a pair of boots - they need to be broken in to fit the user’s hand.  Dad’s work gloves fit me perfectly, and that made me realize that Dad had been preparing my brother and me to wear his gloves in another way – so that we would be ready to stand at the front of the family as its leaders.  Dad set a very high standard in an unassuming way, and my brother and I are now able to wear our Dad’s gloves.

“To all men with young children or grandchildren, I would like to present my father as an example of a great father who spent a lot of time with my brother and me, and our children.  A great father spends time in all sorts of ways with his kids, even when they are grown.  A great father sets high standards for his children and lives his life to the same high standards.  That way, his gloves can be worn by his children.”

Dr. Johnson also freely gave of himself to his community and his fellow man.  He was heavily involved in PTA, an active member of the First Presbyterian Church for 49 years, and a volunteer at the Auburn Food Bank and its outreach effort, The Brown Bag Program.  He was a member of the Auburn Lions Club, served as its president and received the Melvin Jones Fellow Award in 2003 for outstanding service to Lions International.  He also served for many years in Boy Scouts of America, and as his family recalls of that endeavor, “Nobody could cook pancakes over a campfire like Wiley.  He treated many boys for yellow-jacket stings by using a poultice of chewed Sir Walter Raleigh pipe tobacco.  You will never find that in a BSA manual.” 

If Dr. Johnson were to be described in a single sentence, his sons could likely do a better job of it than I.  However, to me Dr. Johnson was simply this: a lamp shining for all to see.  Although he has left us, the good fruit of his life remains. 

All of us at the Whitetail Institute of North America will miss Dr. Johnson, and we deeply respect and appreciate his contributions to our company and to all of us as individuals.  I know that I will think of him often, and of his last lesson to me … especially when it rains.