A 90-year-old woman who died in a Bronx fire was a sharecropper’s 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. 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, officials said. The deadly blaze ended the life of a determined woman whose focused life defied the odds and inspired several generations of admirers. “Being raised by my mother was absolutely magical,” said the victim’s grieving son, Richard Johnson. “My 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.” Among the lessons he said he learned early on was that he would have to share his mother with her students. “She was an excellent teacher,” he said. “As 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. “At P. S. 44, all the parents would come in at the beginning of the year saying they wanted their child in Ms. Johnson’s class,” he recalled. “She was such an excellent teacher. The principal kept her at the third grade because she raised the scores. She got results.” When she wasn’t at the school or fielding homework queries, friends and neighbors could find Johnson at her local church or elbows deep in some community project. “I must say that there’s a story there that’s sometimes missed by this generation,” Richard Johnson said. “She 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.” 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. “That’s the example she set for us,” he said. “Education was always held in high esteem at our house.” 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. “She didn’t want to be a sharecropper, so came to New York to join her two other sisters and the story is that’s where she met my father,” Richard Johnson said. They met when Johnson was working at an early job at a laundry where her future husband was a customer. Despite all she accomplished in New York, Johnson was always proud of her Southern roots. “I’m a sharecropper’s daughter, born and bred in the red soil of Georgia,” she’d say, according to her son. “She was absolutely amazing.” 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 at 722 E. 168th St., between Boston Rd. and Forest Ave., in East Tremont. 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. Sadly, Johnson’s flame was extinguished, too. “It’s a story of upward mobility,” her son reflected. “We 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’s a Bronx story. It’s a New York story.” The story almost ended sooner, in 2012, when Johnson was given just six months to live after being diagnosed with lung cancer. “My mother was a godly woman and a prayerful woman, and she was here for 13 more years,” the son said. “It’s the miracle that so many people pray for, but it happened for my mother.” 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. “We were very proud of her,” Richard Johnson said. “That 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.”.
https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/11/19/pillar-community-90-outlived-cancer-prognosis-only-die-bronx-fire/
Pillar of community, 90, outlived cancer prognosis only to die in Bronx fire
