{"id":45433,"date":"2025-11-19T23:33:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T23:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/45433\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T23:33:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T23:33:08","slug":"pillar-of-community-90-outlived-cancer-prognosis-only-to-die-in-bronx-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/45433\/","title":{"rendered":"Pillar of community, 90, outlived cancer prognosis only to die in Bronx fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 90-year-old woman who died in a Bronx fire<\/a> was a sharecropper\u2019s daughter from Georgia, who moved to New York City when she was 17, dedicated her life to teaching and once ran for a state Assembly seat, friends and relatives said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Alice Johnson even outlived her prognosis after being diagnosed with lung cancer more than a dozen years ago, only to perish in a fast-moving fire that broke out Tuesday night in a residential building where she lived in East Tremont,<\/a> officials said.<\/p>\n

The deadly blaze ended the life of a determined woman whose focused life defied the odds and inspired several generations of admirers.<\/p>\n

\"AliceAlice Johnson, 90, died in a fast-moving fire that broke out in a residential building where she lived on E. 168th St. in the Bronx. (Google)<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing raised by my mother was absolutely magical,\u201d said the victim\u2019s grieving son, Richard Johnson. \u201cMy mother was my first teacher. I can credit any success I have in life to her. She also was a mother to the community. She was very involved in all aspects of the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the lessons he said he learned early on was that he would have to share his mother with her students.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was an excellent teacher,\u201d he said. \u201cAs a teenager and all through my teenage years, my mother, as an elementary school teacher, would give her home telephone to her students. We were very used to students calling from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. if they needed assistance with homework. We were very open to that.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt PS 44, all the parents would come in at the beginning of the year saying they wanted their child in Ms. Johnson\u2019s class,\u201d he recalled. \u201cShe was such an excellent teacher. The principal kept her at the third grade because she raised the scores. She got results.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she wasn\u2019t at the school or fielding homework queries, friends and neighbors could find Johnson at her local church or elbows deep in some community project.<\/p>\n

\u201cI must say that there\u2019s a story there that\u2019s sometimes missed by this generation,\u201d Richard Johnson said. \u201cShe was a very happy housewife, and it was only because of her involvement with the PTA at school that she, like many other women, began to seek fulfillment outside of the home. They knew they had some larger calling beside being a mother and a housewife. She could have that and be a career woman.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her son said Johnson would teach as a paraprofessional in the daytime and go to school at night, then come home and put her books on the table and study late into the night.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the example she set for us,\u201d he said. \u201cEducation was always held in high esteem at our house.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson got an early start in education, then got set off course just as quickly. She graduated high school in Georgia at 16, and enrolled at Savannah State College. But the tuition bill was too expensive for her family, and she had to drop out after one semester.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe didn\u2019t want to be a sharecropper, so came to New York to join her two other sisters, and the story is that\u2019s where she met my father,\u201d Richard Johnson said.<\/p>\n

They met when Johnson was working at an early job at a laundry where her future husband was a customer.<\/p>\n

Despite all she accomplished in New York, Johnson was always proud of her Southern roots.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a sharecropper\u2019s daughter, born and bred in the red soil of Georgia,\u201d she\u2019d say, according to her son. \u201cShe was absolutely amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fire officials said the flames broke out shortly before 9 p.m. Tuesday on the top floor of a two-story residential building where Johnson lived on E. 168th St., between Boston Road and Forest Ave.<\/p>\n

A total of 60 firefighters and EMS medics rushed to the scene. The blaze was quickly brought under control shortly after 9:30 p.m. Its cause was still under investigation.<\/p>\n

Sadly, Johnson\u2019s flame was extinguished, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a story of upward mobility,\u201d her son reflected. \u201cWe lived in the projects for a time, and then my parents were finally able to buy a house. They chose to stay in the Bronx when other people were leaving. They said this is who we are, this is where we want to contribute. There are so many different layers to her life. It\u2019s a Bronx story. It\u2019s a New York story.\u201d<\/p>\n

The story almost ended sooner, in 2012, when Johnson was given just six months to live after being diagnosed with lung cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mother was a godly woman and a prayerful woman, and she was here for 13 more years,\u201d the son said. \u201cIt\u2019s the miracle that so many people pray for, but it happened for my mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along the way was a stint in politics. In 1981, she ran for a seat in the state Assembly, but lost out to Aurelia Greene.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were very proud of her,\u201d Richard Johnson said. \u201cThat is the legacy of Black women: They not only had enough love for their children, but they shared it with all the children in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 90-year-old woman who died in a Bronx fire was a sharecropper\u2019s daughter from Georgia, who moved to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,262,263,266,85,267,9,24,264,12,63,261,265,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-45433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-city","tag-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-crime","tag-sub-county-region","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}