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Seventy years old and recently retired, Johnson exudes a certain equanimity when reflecting on her life. Some experiences have been extraordinary, like the fact that four out of five of her sons pursued careers in professional baseball, one in the Major Leagues. Some experiences have been extremely relatable, like having to start over after divorce.

Throughout it all, she has brought a bootstrap mentality that would make her pioneer forebears proud. After all, she is a fourth-generation resident of Thatcher, a small Arizona town her ancestors helped found.

Johnson got married when she was 17 and moved to Indiana for a year with her husband. She says it was at about that time that he decided they wouldn’t be going to college. Johnson ruefully notes that, upon this matrimonial mandate, she forewent the scholarships she’d been offered at two state universities for piano performance.

Instead, she and her husband returned to Thatcher and started managing a restaurant. The years passed, the babies came and their entrepreneurial success grew. “My husband wanted a baseball team,” Johnson says smiling, and they got it: They had five sons and a daughter. But after nearly 20 years, the marriage soured, and Johnson felt she needed to get out both for her safety and that of her children.

While divorce brought relief and freedom, it also came with substantial challenges. “I went from a very large salary, because we owned six businesses, to … [being a single parent] with six kids,” Johnson says. “I had to find a job, and I was a high school graduate.”

Tellingly — and perhaps characteristically — of Johnson, she didn’t just find a job. She found several, and she wasn’t too proud for any of them. She started as a carhop at a drive-thru burger chain and took on other odd jobs until her friend recommended a part-time role at a regional hospital in Safford.

This was the beginning of a transformation for Johnson, although she didn’t know it then. Not only would that role become a gateway to a career, but it would also open up a pathway to education for herself and her family.

Johnson’s third son and fourth child, Elliot Johnson (AAFB, 2012; CERT/FINP, 2016; BSB/FP, 2016), admires his mother’s work ethic.��

“I’d usually get about three hours of sleep,” Johnson recalls with a laugh.

When she was a supervisor in the admitting department at the hospital, Johnson resolved to ask for a raise. Her colleague encouraged her, noting that he’d received a raise without even asking for one.

“When I asked, [do] you know what the CFO said to me? He said, ‘You don’t even have any education. I can go down to [a big box store] and find anybody to do what you do.’”

Johnson didn’t get dejected. She got mad. This, she thought, was one more reason to “remove the objection,” as Elliot put it. Another reason was that she had her eye on a fellowship opportunity through one of her associations. To be eligible for that, she had to have a bachelor’s degree.

“It does take bravery to go back to school when you’re 50 years old,” she says emphatically. Johnson had good reasons to be brave.

Johnson, CBCS, CHAM, FAHM, MAOM, completed both her associate and bachelor’s degrees through ������ý. She went on to earn her master’s degree at another institution, which gave her perspective on what she liked about UOPX and what she can do as a faculty member in the College of Health Professions to help students like her. (She joined the UOPX faculty in 2013, and she has taught at a community college for three years.) What surprised her the most about going to school was that she actually enjoyed it. She liked learning, she liked becoming more competent and she liked growing as an individual.

Johnson wasn’t the only one affected by her return to higher education. All her children have gone on to pursue higher education. Her daughter recently completed her master’s degree in nursing through ������ý, Johnson says. Elliot went to UOPX while playing baseball professionally. Johnson has been there every step of the way, whether reading her daughter’s papers or counseling Elliot on how to manage school and baseball at the same time.

The result is that Johnson and her children — and even her daughter-in-law — are now a family of Phoenixes. And while Johnson has retired from the hospital, she continues to work with UOPX as an instructor. One of her biggest accomplishments has been co-creating a technology course on electronic health records. “It was the most work I’ve ever done in my life,” she says. “It just expanded my world tremendously.”

Yet hard work has never been seen as an obstacle to this family. From her pioneer forebears to her children’s career aspirations to her rise from the ashes of her marriage, Johnson has proved that hard work is actually an opportunity.

“Even if it’s not easy, our family has no problem achieving and embracing any challenge,” Elliot observes. “It’s who we are as a family.”