The Johnson Family Legacy Endowment was created by Judith “Judie” Johnson, Jayson A. Johnson, and Alisa L. Barada with generous donations from the Johnson Family, Nancy Spangler, and Eric Wildgrube. This fund is being established to support the Johnson Family Legacy Scholarship Fund (JFLSFund) at the Pasadena Educational Foundation in support of scholarships for students at John Muir Early College Magnet High School.
Honoring Their Love for John Muir High School and Northwest Pasadena
The Johnson Family has deep roots in Pasadena that have forged an equally deep love for Northwest Pasadena and John Muir High School (JMHS). Matriarch Barbara V. Johnson was born in 1928 in Pasadena, after her parents moved here from Little Rock, Arkansas. Patriarch Edward Johnson arrived in Pasadena in the mid-1930s. Barbara and Edward married in 1946 and became the first Black Americans to purchase a home on West Montana Street, three blocks from JMHS, in a neighborhood that was predominantly Japanese American at that time. They resided there for 60 years.
Starting with Edward Johnson, who graduated in 1938, four generations of the family have attended JMHS*; the latest graduated in 2024. The school has been integral to each generation’s upraising and values, much like it was for many at the time. As filmmaker and Muir alum Pablo Miralles notes in his important essay about the history of the school (link below):
“Even as the national Civil Rights Movement was still in its infancy around most of the country, (the school’s) relative racial diversity and inclusion allowed for feelings of brotherhood and progress not seen in many public schools of the time. This ‘John Muir Spirit’ (was) a conscious sense of pride among students and faculty of all races in their school’s status as the only integrated high school in Northeast Los Angeles County.”
Following many decades of steady attendance and enthusiastic community support, JMHS’s fortunes waned in the late 20th century and early 21st due to busing, white flight, disinvestment, and many other structural factors. “We would dream about where Muir had been and what we wanted it to be,” notes Judie (class of 1974), daughter of Edward and Barbara and one of six Johnson siblings. “We asked ‘How do we do that?’” Scholarships for JMHS students became the family’s answer and a potent way to show their love of Northwest Pasadena and JMHS.
Scholarships Grow Greater Roots as a PCF Endowed Fund
Following the death of daughter/sister Jennifer Johnson Townsend (class of 1964) in 2000, the family awarded their first scholarship to honor Jennifer and her long career as a teacher within the Pasadena Unified School District. They later formalized their commitment to scholarships by creating the Johnson Family Legacy Scholarship Fund (JFLSFund) at the Pasadena Educational Foundation (PEF), which has grown to support several scholarships for students at JMHS. Family members and friends contributed generously to the fund to get it started and years later, continue to sustain it with donations each year.**
In recent years, JMHS – now formally called John Muir High School Early College Magnet – has once again become a flourishing school with a waitlist to enroll. In wanting to grow the corpus of their Legacy Fund at PEF and eventually increase the amounts awarded to students, Judie and her only surviving sibling, brother Jayson (class of 1981), turned to the Pasadena Community Foundation in 2024 to endow the fund, creating the Johnson Family Legacy Endowment. “We knew we had to give our support some roots that made it sustainable,” notes Judie, “and PCF was the best place to do that.” PEF will continue to award scholarships annually by using the interest earned on this PCF endowed fund.
Muir’s resurgence has been a joy for the family to witness, reminding them of the years they studied in its vibrant classrooms. They hope the scholarships will uplift the school’s current momentum and its students’ dreams of higher education.
“We wanted to connect the past to the present,” Jayson says. “John Muir taught me to step up and step out. It gave me confidence going into college. I met leaders in our community who bridged my high school years to those in college and beyond. JMHS absolutely has DNA in mine. Judie and I want today’s students to carry JMHS with them too, and our scholarships help do that.”
The Johnson Family invites the community to join their efforts in funding scholarships for JMHS students. You can donate to the Johnson Family Legacy Scholarships at the Pasadena Educational Foundation to provide immediate support for the 2025-2025 schoolyear scholarships. Or, you can donate to the Pasadena Community Foundation’s Johnson Family Legacy Endowment to help grow the scholarship fund for future use.
Footnotes:
*The school was not called John Muir High School until 1954. It opened in 1926 as John Muir Technical High School and experienced several name changes and purposes over the next two decades.
Visit Pablo Miralles’ detailed, engaging account of the school’s history here: https://johnmuiralumni.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/JMHSA-HISTORY-small03_05_21-1.pdf
**The Johnson and Spangler families have a long-standing friendship in Northwest Pasadena. In 1968, the Spangler family sued the Pasadena Unified School District over the segregation of schools. The Federal government and the ACLU joined the suit, which resulted in the implementation of a desegregation plan for the entire district. Jim Spangler, the family patriarch, passed in 2022, and in recognition of the families’ long friendship and commitment to social justice, the Jim & Bobbie Spangler Scholarship was added to the JFLSFund at PEF.
