Lois S. Johnson retired from West Point Elementary School in 2012 after her twenty-eight-year career as a speech therapist and classroom teacher. Her teaching and educational opportunities reflected her life as an Army spouse moving from post to post some twenty-two times, including six years in two tours in Germany. She started her career as a speech therapist as a student teacher in the Highland Falls-Fort Montgomery Central School District in 1980 and practiced her profession in Heidelberg and Bamberg, Germany.
After stops in Newport, Rhode Island, where she was a volunteer in a special needs class, and Fairfax, Virginia, where she used her skills at Ear, Nose, and Throat Specialists of Northern Virginia, she served as a speech therapist for Orange-Ulster Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES), the Highland Falls-Fort Montgomery Central School District (eleven years), and, starting in 2000, finished her career in 2012 at the West Point Schools as a speech therapist and as a pre-Kindergarten teacher assisted by class mascot Clifford the Big Red Dog. She received her undergraduate education at stops along her life’s journey: Orange County Community College, Cameron College (Lawton, OK), Salve Regina College (Newport, RI), and State University of New York at New Paltz (BS, 1980). Once back at West Point, she completed her Master of Science degree from Long Island University in 1991, which she had begun with credits from Emerson College. Along the way, she honed her educational skills as a youth soccer coach in Heidelberg and as a tour guide at Brotherhood Winery in Washingtonville. She helped to form the 5th New York Regiment and transformed herself to a soldier’s wife of the eighteenth century in period dress. She served on the Education Committee at Boscobel House and Gardens. Even from her present home in Danville, Kentucky, she serves on the board of the Friends of the American Revolution at West Point, working to preserve the remains of Fortress West Point. She joined the Garden Club of Danville and the Green Acres Book Club. She put incredible energy and creativity into remodeling the Johnsons’ colonial home built in 1949-50 and resurrected the surrounding landscape.
Contributions
- Caught Between a Bench and a Chain
The week after our grandson entered USMA as a member of the Class of 2022, my husband Jim and I had business to attend to on a beautiful, sun-filled, see-as-far-up-the-river as possible, unbelievably, quiet day at West Point. This was the day after thousands had attended the 4th of July concert, and West Point’s… Read more: Caught Between a Bench and a Chain