Retired teachers Roger and Joyce Johnson must have answered tens of thousands of questions from the "kiddos" during their 30-year career. Occasionally, they'd include a life lesson in their response. "When you divide two into anything greater than itself, what do you do with the remainder?"
Their answer? "You share it with others." "Neither one of us believes in waste of any kind—time or money," Joyce explains. "Money gives us financial security and protection; but when you come to the point where you have more than you need, what do you do with it? You put it someplace where it can grow and help somebody else or help a good program. It's that simple. And it's not just money. If you're willing to give time, that's equally important. It may be a little drop in the bucket but nonetheless, it's a drop."
Joyce Glasser, a native "Pittsburgher," was a shy and introverted student at the inner-city public schools she and her two siblings attended. "My older sister was a saint, and I was a step down from that," she muses. "My poor brother went through school following two perfect students." Her goal growing up was to be a teacher. "I would sit down with my brother and whomever else I could corral, and I would play teacher. I thought learning stuff was fun and then when I learned it, I wanted to share it. I never had a second choice." She loved words, taking classes in both Latin and Spanish—her only foreign language choices in school.
Joyce was the first one in her family on "either side in any generation" to go to college. After graduating second in her high school class of 1961, she chose Grove City College, a private Christian liberal arts school instead of Pitt or Penn State universities. "It was bucolic," Joyce remembers, "like a cocoon that suited me because I hadn't broken out of my shell yet."
She soon discovered that if she wanted more options she would have to go to a larger school. Encouraged by her Spanish professor, Joyce transferred to Kent State University in Ohio. "It suited my personality at the time. Just be anonymous, do your course work and get out." She graduated in 1965 from the School of Education with a major in Spanish.
At that time, teaching jobs were difficult to find in Pennsylvania or even out of state, so Joyce applied to TWA and qualified at the top level to be an airline "hostess." To her advantage, she spoke fluent Spanish "so I could do international flights." On the "same day" in August 1965, Joyce suddenly received two job offers—one from TWA to begin training in Kansas City, and the second for an opening in the Spanish Department at Bethel Park Senior High School, in a suburb south of Pittsburgh. Both jobs paid $5,000 a year (equivalent to $40,000 in 2022. The average salary in 1965 was $6,900). Joyce chose to fulfill her childhood goal—teaching. For the next thirty years, she taught Spanish and directed the high school's foreign exchange programs.
Five years after she started teaching at Bethel Park high school, Joyce met Bethel Park middle school math teacher Roger Johnson, the man with whom she would share the next 52 years—and counting—of her life.
**
Roger Johnson was born in Punxsutawney, PA, and raised in Dayton, a small town in northwest Pennsylvania. As a boy, Roger remembers his father telling him stories of working in a limestone quarry while his own father, Roger's grandfather, worked in the coal mines around Sagamore, PA. He recalled his family living in company housing, and the miners' union and sometimes violent strikes.
"He came home from school one day," Roger remembers his father telling him. "The company had started kicking strikers out of their homes. Their furniture was out on the street, and they literally didn't have a place to go."
That's when Roger's father decided that working in a mine "wasn't the way to go." He needed to be educated. "He was the only one in his family who graduated from college," Roger says. He went on to get a masters as well as a doctorate in education from the University of Pittsburgh and spent his career in administration.
As for himself, Roger had a "great childhood, full of good times and energy. My mother was a housewife in the classic fifties 'Father Knows Best' kind of thing." Growing up, he excelled in both mathematics and athletics. From the age of ten he "geared into teaching." "Although with a math background," he admits, "there were much more financially significant opportunities; but somehow, I found my way to teaching."
While in school, one of the sports Roger was exceptionally skilled in was baseball. "I played from the age of eight to the time I was 22. It wasn't a big deal like it is today; parents sending their kids to five-star baseball camp. It was play. It was recreation. It wasn't thought of as a gateway to riches like we think of today. I was just a sandlot player who played with a lot of good baseball players in the Pittsburgh area who eventually got signed by major league teams."
Thanks to his coach, Roger earned a tryout with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1960 when he graduated from high school. "I got to Forbes Field, and it was like coming out to another planet," he recalls of that fateful day. "It was a whole different culture. There were scouts there. Everyone had a uniform on. 'Pie' Traynor was there." [Traynor was in the Baseball Hall of Fame and cited as the greatest third baseman in MLB history after WWII].
"They didn't seem too impressed with my skills and weren't ready to sign me. I asked the scout what he thought of the third baseman. 'He'll never make it!' he replied. It was Richie Allen!" (Four years later, Allen was named the 1964 National League Rookie of the Year and played 15 seasons in MLB.)
Roger's tryout experience made him realize that "people make mistakes and scouts don't walk on water. There might have been other opportunities for me after [college] but I never pursued it." He did receive a baseball scholarship at the University of Pittsburgh where he earned a degree in math and science in 1964, and played in the Pitt Marching Band. A year later, he began his 30-year career in education at Bethel Park Middle School, teaching math to seventh and eighth graders. He also was an instructor for Penn State in its Graduate School of Education.
Golf became his new preferred sport.
**
In 1969, Roger was selected by his school district to spend a year at the American Institutes for Research, writing middle school curriculum for Westinghouse Learning Corporation's Project Plan, an experimental program to motivate kids and get them involved in working at their own pace and then move on when they were ready. "It was really ahead of its time," Roger explains. While in California, he took the opportunity to travel throughout the state. "It opened my eyes to a lot."
During the summer of '69, Joyce was touring Spain with a group of her high school students. "We went to a summer school program there," she remembers. "I was the teacher, but I learned more than the students."
After enjoying their respective adventures away from Pennsylvania, Roger and Joyce returned to their separate schools at Bethel Park for the start of the 1969-70 school year—and the beginning of what would be their lifelong relationship.
**
That fall Roger was recruiting members for the American Federation of Teachers Union when he cold-called Joyce Glasser, a fellow teacher in the school district he knew only casually. "I liked his phone voice," Joyce remembers, but she wasn't sure what he wanted. "Something about joining something," she told a friend.
He continued to call her until one day in January 1970, when they met by chance at a local 'watering hole' where teachers went on Friday afternoons. Unbeknownst to Joyce, Roger was looking for a bridge partner when he approached her and said, "What do you bid to 7 No-Trump?" "That was his opening line!" Joyce laughs at the memory. "'Pass', I responded. I guess that was sort of a test. Once I passed, I was in."
The couple started to date as well as play bridge together. Nine months later Roger proposed. They were married on November 21, 1970, in Pittsburgh, in the church where Joyce belonged "and nearly 52 years later, we're still playing bridge together and still not understanding each other's bidding!"
**
Roger was also a leader in the Bethel Park Federation of Teachers, including "most every negotiation for the better part of 20 years," as well as serving several terms as union president. "He was the best leader they ever had," Joyce says.
"Collective bargaining came in and started to level the bargaining a little bit," Roger explains. "There were a lot of breakthroughs in terms of non-economic conditions for teachers. It wasn't just a matter of salary. It was working conditions. We spent 98 percent of our time bargaining non-economic issues."
Roger was a long-time member of the Bethel St. Clair Rotary Club and was awarded the prestigious Rotary Foundation Paul Harris Society Fellow in recognition of his ongoing commitment to serve others.
The couple did a lot of traveling in the summers and on sabbaticals. "Roger went with me one summer to Mexico with students," Joyce says. "He realized it's not really a vacation when you're responsible for other people's kids." While they didn't have children of their own, they each had "150 kids a year. Always the same age," Roger says. "And we traded them in every year," Joyce laughs.
**
In 1995, Roger and Joyce were in their fifties when they took early retirement from teaching. Roger's love of golf and their mutual love of North Carolina brought them to Pinehurst in 1996. Two months after they arrived, a neighbor where they were living temporarily while their house was being built, "came knocking on their door and said, 'Well, it's time now for you to get involved! Come with me to the hospital.'" Joyce remembers Helen Oleson saying. Helen had started the Toymakers group at Moore Regional Hospital more than 30 years earlier. "I had no choice," Joyce says of their encounter.
"I walked into the workroom with all these ladies," Joyce recalls. "It was like walking into a family reunion—aunts and grandmas—all at least 10 to 20 years older than me. And they took me under their wing. When Cindy Strother, administrative director of FirstHealth Guest Services, saw that I was ambulatory, she asked me if I would deliver the toys. 'It's kind of a walk,' Helen told me, but I was happy to do that."
That volunteer job evolved into several more at the hospital. "I made toys one day a week; ran 'hall errands;' then they added pharmacy which became a job all by itself." Joyce's job as pharmacy currier turned into a paid part-time position, working three days a week. "It was perfect for me. I got to meet everybody in the hospital. It made me feel like I was part of the community."
Using her language skills, Joyce was also on-call as an "in-house interpreter," assisting in clarifying discharge instructions for Spanish-speaking patients and their families.
**
Although Roger and Joyce loved Pinehurst and thought of it as "home," "on a whim" they purchased a home in Fort Myers, Florida. "We were there only half of the time," Joyce explains. "But I became involved in 'Lifeline' in Cape Coral. I thought it was related to the lockets that you wear, 'I've fallen, and I can't get up.' After I made a commitment to take the training, I discovered that it was the Lifeline Family Center, a residential program for teen moms. Their motto is, 'We Save Lives Two at a Time.' It was a very good fit for me."
Joyce worked with girls, most around 16 years old, on getting their GED, helping them or their families with English and Spanish, or just "talking about life. That's what they needed. Just someone to talk to and listen."
As much as the Johnsons enjoyed being part of two active communities, in the end, they returned "home" to Pinehurst full time.
**
For nearly three decades since retiring, the couple has filled their busy lives with work, fun, and service to others. Roger played golf, winning two Super-Senior Championships at Pinehurst Country Club as well as "his share" of Tin Whistle championships; sold real estate for Pinehurst Resort Realty; served as a teaching assistant at Sandhills Community College; was president of The English-Speaking Union; and president of the Pennsylvania Association of School Retirees Region 13 in North and South Carolina.
He also volunteered at Community Presbyterian Church. "I assisted with CALL (Community Assistance Language Learners), tutoring some of the middle school kiddos in math after school," he says. "It's a connection to a caring adult," Joyce says. "It's like lighting a candle when you're in a little corner. Brighten the corner where you are—that's all you can do."
They also established the Joyce G. and Roger W. Johnson Scholarship through Community Presbyterian in support of the Sandhills Community College. "All our parents died within a short period of time," Joyce explains. "When everything was taken care of, there was just a little bit of money left over; and we said, 'Let's do something that would really make them proud.' So we put it in a scholarship fund and we're so happy we did.
"I think my happiest moment was when we got a thank you note from a gal who was older and had four children. She worked really hard to get herself through nursing school. We went to her graduation when she was finished. She wrote us a thank you note—hand written, signed her name, RN. She was proud of what she had accomplished, and she let us know. And we are proud of her."
**
When Joyce returned to Pinehurst from Fort Myers, a friend suggested she volunteer with the Foundation of FirstHealth. "Roger and I know the hospital, both as volunteers and as patients," Joyce says. "Between us, we've had seven joint replacements and a couple of other odds and ends of surgery. We know firsthand about the teamwork and the commitment of the employees. We have nothing but good feelings about FirstHealth overall." But, Joyce admits, she knew nothing about the Foundation.
**
In the summer of 2015, on her first day sitting at the front desk in the Foundation office, Joyce, who hadn't totally adjusted to 'southern speak,' answered a call from a woman with a question about the " Squirrel Society." Unsure what the caller meant, Joyce asked one of the Foundation staff, "Do we sponsor animals?" She quickly learned that the caller was asking about the Foundation's Scroll Society, the most successful annual giving program of the Foundation and the cornerstone of the Foundation's—and FirstHealth's—growth.
This delightful misunderstanding set Joyce on the path to learn more about the Foundation and what it does in support of FirstHealth and its caregivers in providing world-class health care to the community. In 2020, Roger and Joyce established a charitable gift annuity with the Foundation of FirstHealth and became members of the Squirrel…Scroll Society.
"We wholeheartedly support the healthcare system here," Roger says, "and the work of the Foundation. The entire community benefits from the innovations, the professionalism, and the genuine caring of the FirstHealth family. It gives us pleasure to be even a small part of this enterprise."
"I think you need to share," Joyce adds. "Anything beyond your necessities you need to share."
Just remember the lesson of the squirrels:
You have gathered nuts by the score,
Exactly predicting if you needed more.
Teach me to take no more than I need.
To learn more about planned giving opportunities like Charitable Gift Annuities, please call our office at (910) 695-7500.
