LaGrange Johnson
Ambassador Brenda LaGrange Johnson received her first degree in education: "I had accelerated and graduated a semester early from Duke University in 1960 but New York wouldn't accept my credentials from North Carolina as a teacher. I had to get New York City credentials. By the time I passed the exam and got my certification it was April and there was only one opening in the entire school system. It was at Bedford Stuyvesant Brooklyn and I said, 'you know what? For two months I can do that and then I'll transfer to some very New York East Side posh school'. Well I got so involved with the children and thinking that I was actually making a difference, that I stayed for seven years. I only left when I had my first child. It was really - it was just very special."
"I think it did change my life because I had grown up in a very insular community. When I grew up there were no African-Americans living in Forest Hills and there was no exposure to really an impoverished area, which was Bedford Stuyvesant. Operation Head Start was a jump-start programme for elementary school children. I see, with my own six grandchildren, that you have to have something before first grade. By the time these children get to first grade they already know how to read. So I respected President Kennedy for doing this programme. I think it made a difference."
Operation Head Start
Although Kennedy was killed in 1963, he had inspired Operation Head Start, which was planned in 1964 and implemented in Bedford Stuyvesant in 1965 while LaGrange was teaching there at first PS 75 and then PS 309. Of Kennedy, she remarked: "He started the Peace Corps and one of the things I loved the most about working at Embassy Kingston was that for 45 years Jamaica has had a Peace Corps volunteer group. In fact, it's one of the oldest. So Jamaica is very fortunate. I keep saying the Peace Corps needs a great PR person because nobody really understands what a great job the Peace Corps does around the world and especially in Jamaica. These people come as pure volunteers - and you know what's even more exciting, Jamaica is on the start-up programme. The Peace Corps will now take workers over 50 years old and the Peace Corps in Jamaica is one of the test markets for this programme."
While teaching in Bedford Stuyvesant, she went to night school for three years and earned her master's at Columbia Teachers' College while also working weekends at a job that counterbalanced the world she saw at school. As she tells the story: "We walked into Tiffany's one day and the Chairman of the board turned to my father, who was on the board of Tiffany's and said: 'Oh Frank, I see you're here shopping with your daughter. What is she doing right this minute?' I said: 'I'm just Christmas shopping.' And he said: 'No, no. You have to come with me.' This is a true story. It was a Saturday in December. I was a Duke student and in 20 minutes I was behind a counter selling jewellery in Tiffany's. I thought this was the most glorious job in the entire world, that I got to sell the most beautiful objects in the world and they gave me a discount along with my salary. When I tell my kids this today they say: 'Mom, you should never have left, you would have been president.' Every time I go in there, I feel like part of a club."
fabulous job
"I remember John F. Kennedy came in and bought a present for Jacqueline Kennedy. Nelson Rockefeller, when he was just about to marry Happy, bought a huge set of aquamarine and diamond necklace, bracelet, ring and earrings. I remember being responsible for having the bodyguards literally deliver it to Mr Rockefeller's office. At the time he was governor of New York. So it was great fun. I mean it was an absolutely fabulous job which counterbalanced the fact that I would then be going to Bedford Stuyvesant Brooklyn and working in a very impoverished area, which I think gave me great respect and love, not only for teaching, but also for the school situation in Jamaica."
Just as Brenda LaGrange's life changed when the only teaching job available was in Bedford Stuyvesant, it also changed when her friend Merle Cayne introduced her to Howard Johnson. Brenda LaGrange's first marriage was short, ended in divorce and produced her eldest son but, after hearing about each other for two years, when she and Howard finally met, they discovered her friend was right, they were destined to be together. Brenda said: "Within three weeks we were engaged, married within four months and we've been married almost 41 years!" She described her husband's background: "Howard had graduated from University of Southern California Law School. He was recruited and joined the FBI. He was incredibly brilliant and they sent him to language school in Monterey California, where he learned Spanish and he worked the Mafia. He worked some very dangerous assignments. He signed up for the first three years and then decided he wanted to be a businessman and not in the FBI, although I think the training was amazing and he has great respect for the Bureau."
An absolutely charming man with a penchant for sharing novels, which he reads voraciously, Johnson is a highly successful businessman who, according to his wife is "not an active person in the political field" but supportive of her myriad interests. From 1968 until 1977 the Ambassador stayed home, had children and pursued volunteer work. She confides: "I used to run the Presbyterian Church Fair. My husband laughed at me saying, 'If you can run that fair with 200 volunteers who don't have to do what you tell them to do, you could run a company.' That's one of the reasons I started my own business. I decided I was tired of just volunteering. I wanted to actually earn money for what I considered my very hard work."
She and her friend Merle set up BrenMer Industries and for 27 years had the most fun importing products from around the world. In light of her subsequent work with The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, she finds it ironic that the mainstay of their business was from Windsor, England, the Corby Electric Trouser Press, a product that her husband sent their way when he was approached to distribute it. She remembers: "We weren't excited about it because it was a boring product, truthfully. It wasn't glamorous or fashionable. It still looks the same as it looked 60 years ago. But we decided: 'OK, we'll try it.' And through the years it was the bread and butter of our company." Never underestimate the prosaic, but reliable, might be a lesson learned there.
Her entry into political service was definitely not prosaic. She said: "I fell in love with vice-president George Bush. He was one of 14 candidates running for president of the United States. That was 1987. He was elected in 1988. Because I raised the first table for this million-dollar fund-raiser here in NY, I was given the privilege of sitting next to him on the day of this event. I had never met him before and I started talking to him and decided I would follow this man to the end of the earth. I just absolutely thought he was the most wonderful person. He's just an amazing man. I wasn't involved in politics prior to that."
Several years before meeting the vice-president and Barbara Bush, Mrs LaGrange Johnson had cancer of the colon: "That's one of the reasons I'm so involved with the American Cancer Society," she explained. "And I serve on the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, because of Barbara and George Bush and my association with the Bush family. They live in Houston and recruited me because of the friendship. I serve on their board so I'm very involved in cancer treatment and prevention."
great privilege
When their son, George W. Bush, was elected president, he appointed her to the board of the Kennedy Center. She notes: "You have to be appointed by the President and it was a great, great privilege. Truthfully, I never thought I would then be fortunate enough to be appointed an ambassador to serve in President Bush's administration, because he had already rewarded me by appointing me to the Kennedy Center. Sadly, when you become an ambassador, you are required to resign from all of your boards, so I am a Trustee Emeritus of the Kennedy Center but I have the greatest respect for the Kennedy Center. What impressed me the most is the dedication of everyone who works at the Kennedy Center from the president, Michael Kaiser, to the chairman, Steve Swartzman, and all of the amazing staff they have. The concerts that I chose to do at the Atrium of the Embassy (in St Andrew) I copied directly from the Kennedy Center. They have a free concert 365 days a year. Most people don't know about this. It's free to any visitor and they have world-famous people perform every day at 5:30 at the Kennedy Center Atrium. We tried to do monthly concerts in the Embassy Atrium open to the general public but because of security at the Embassy, it ended up becoming by invitation."
She says of her three years in Jamaica: "The Rose Town project really touched my heart. It made me think of my days in Bedford Stuyvesant and I actually want to continue with that a great deal. One of the things I regretted is that I didn't have enough interaction with the Boys and Girls Clubs in Jamaica because I believe in scouting, boys and girls clubs and community projects. Anything to keep children busy after school. Keeping them on the right path. Denzel Washington is often quoted on television saying that the Boys and Girls Club he belonged to saved his life because he would go there after school. They had a small acting group and they helped him with his homework. After-school programmes keep children out of trouble. When we started the Woman's Board for Madison Square Boys and Girls Club, the clubhouse provided sports, but what children needed was help with their homework. So we set up a tutorial programme to hire schoolteachers. The kids would come, do their homework at the clubhouse with these tutors we hired, and after they finished their homework, they would do the sports. That is a programme that should be emulated in Jamaica. If you don't succeed in school, how are you going to get anywhere?"
For her philanthropic and humanitarian work, Ambassador Brenda LaGrange Johnson was honoured by the American Friends of Jamaica (AFJ) on October 6 and appointed the newest member of the AFJ board, so her association with Jamaica endures.