Most of Jeannette C. Pearson Johnson's ninety-five years have been spent in a library. Over the course of her lifetime, Johnson has served as an elementary school librarian, a public librarian, and a church librarian, as well as a library volunteer until as recently as last year.
It was her mother, a former first-grade teacher, who instilled in her a love of reading. Throughout her library career, Johnson was able to do the same for countless students and community members. She recalls how much she enjoyed "getting the right book for the right person" by assessing a library patron's reading level and interests and providing reading recommendations.
Born and raised in Galesburg, Illinois, Johnson was twelve years old when she realized that she would like to become a librarian. She volunteered in her junior high and high school libraries and took a course on using the library when she was in high school. Johnson attended her high school librarian's alma mater, Augustana College, Rock Island, and worked at the college library's circulation desk. Her father died unexpectedly when she was in junior high, so money was tight, but her mother encouraged her to reach her goal of becoming a librarian and provided financial support for college.
After graduating from Augustana College in 1951 with a bachelor's degree in English, Johnson enrolled in the University of Illinois. Upon earning her master's degree in library science in 1952, she discovered that the quality and even existence of elementary school libraries across the United States was diverse. For two years, Johnson worked as an elementary school librarian for the Galesburg Public Schools, traveling to a different school library every day—three days a week to a city school and two days a week to a rural school. "It is fresh in my mind how I chose fifth graders who were good students and taught them how to help in the library on the days I was at other schools," Johnson said.
In 1954, she married a fellow Augustana alum, Harland Johnson, and moved to Tacoma, Washington, where her husband was stationed at Fort Lewis during the Korean War. Johnson was hired as the first salaried elementary school librarian in the Tacoma Public Schools, where she travelled to different schools every day to encourage that rooms be designated as libraries and to teach students how to use libraries.
After Harland was discharged from the army in 1955, the couple moved to his hometown, Sioux City, Iowa, where he joined his father in business, and she took a job as a reference librarian at the Sioux City Public Library. When Johnson was approached at the library by an elementary school principal looking for someone to start the first library at his school, she took him up on the offer.
The library at Bryant Elementary School was the size of a large closet with children waiting in line to come in, Johnson recalled. Word of her work at the school library spread, and she was soon recruited by another school for the princely sum of thirty-five cents an hour. At her new school, Whittier Elementary, Johnson organized volunteers from the parent-teacher association, teaching them how to type book cards and pockets, glue them into books, and make book covers, while she cataloged the books.
Over the years, her family grew to include three daughters and one son. When her oldest daughter started kindergarten at Joy Elementary School, Johnson volunteered to organize the school's first library, using the same methods she had previously employed.
Johnson also worked as a volunteer in the small library at her church for over a decade; when her family joined a new church, she started a library there. Over the years, she was active in the Lutheran Church Library Association (LCLA), serving as president of the national organization from 2001-2002. She also organized the Siouxland (Iowa) Chapter of the LCLA, which included twelve churches in and near Sioux City.
She and her husband were married over sixty-five years until his death in 2019. Education was highly valued in their household, and their children include a pastor, teacher, chemist, and musician. In addition, there are nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren in the family.
For more than eighty years, Johnson worked or volunteered in libraries, finally stepping down as an active volunteer in July 2024, when her health began to keep her at home. The most rewarding part of her long career in librarianship? Helping people. "I have enjoyed being a librarian. It was an excellent job!"