COLUMBIA – Former students, colleagues, friends, even his family knew George Washington Johnson, Jr. simply as “Coach.”
“Coaching was part of his DNA,” said Christy Lambert, who earlier this week joined others in sharing memories from her 12-year friendship with Johnson for scrunners.com. Johnson died July 3 at age 84 after a long battle with melanoma.
“He was one of the good ones,” said Lambert, associate athletic director for administration at Ben Lippen School in Columbia, where Johnson coached cross country and track for 23 years. Lambert’s son, Justin, was a member of both teams and a 2006 graduate of the school.
Johnson was born in Lucknow, a small crossroads community north of Bishopville in Lee County. He taught and coached cross-country at Brookland-Cayce High starting in 1959. His teams would win six state championships during his 30 years at the school.
Johnson retired from teaching in 1989 before being hired as a cross-country and track coach that same year at Ben Lippen. The Falcons would go on to win 11 state championships under his leadership. Johnson was the first coach hired by the private school and this past year the school dedicated its yearbook to him, another first for a coach at Ben Lippen.
Since his death earlier this week, former students, colleagues and friends of Johnson have been posting glowing comments about “Coach” on the school’s Facebook page.
In the state’s cross-country community, Johnson is universally regarded as the “Father of Cross-Country." His teams at Brookland-Cayce won their state titles at a time when cross-country was just a club sport. In 1972, a year after the Bearcats’ remarkable run of six state titles and five runner-up finishes, cross-country was recognized by the South Carolina High School League as a high school sport.
Retired track and cross-country coach Bob Jenkins said Johnson was “a good man and a great coach. He developed very, very good individuals.”
Jenkins, who had known Johnson since the latter’s days at Brookland-Cayce, said Johnson has had an impact on “thousands and thousands of lives.
“He was a good man who was great for the kids of South Carolina, and it was my pleasure to have known him,” Jenkins said.
Aside from sharing with his students his deep knowledge of the training required to succeed at cross-country and track, Johnson would frequently help them in other ways.
“He was always at the track,” Lambert said. “He would work around a kid’s schedule to be there for them, whether it was running at 6:30 in the morning or 9:30 at night. I remember many times when I’d see his car there and it would be the only one there. He would be sitting in the stands with his stopwatch on a kid on the track.”
Lambert said Johnson also would use his own money to help students whose family couldn’t afford to buy running shoes.
“He was a friend and a man with a big heart,” she said.
Johnson, who is in the Brookland-Cayce Hall of Fame, as well as the SCTCCCA Hall of Fame and the SCISA Hall of Fame, spent much of the 2011 season in the hospital, receiving treatment for his melanoma. Lambert said his family was at his bedside when he passed away.
Pelion High coach Mark Bedenbaugh will be one of the pallbearers for Johnson’s funeral on Friday. He competed in cross-country and track under Johnson at Brookland-Cayce in the early 1980s and he credits Johnson for helping steer him into a career in high school coaching.
“I wanted to be a basketball player, but in a way coach Johnson saved me,” Bedenbaugh said. Johnson could see that the young Bedenbaugh had running ability and he convinced him to switch sports in his sophomore year at Brookland-Cayce.
“If you wanted to be a runner, he would make you a runner,” Bedenbaugh said.
That training under Johnson helped Bedenbaugh set two school records at Brookland-Cayce. He would carry that training regimen with him to college, where Bedenbaugh competed in cross-country and track at what is now Francis Marion University and where he still holds records.
“He prepared me for college. We trained hard in high school and when I went off to college I was prepared for it,” Bedenbaugh said. He has adopted many of those training principles in his coaching.
“I still use those principles in my running and I use them with my athletes,” he said.
Bedenbaugh said Johnson will be missed, especially when the new school year starts later this summer and the cross-country and track seasons roll around.
“It definitely won’t be the same. One thing you could always count on at every cross-country and track season was that on the sidelines somewhere was George Johnson.”
Johnson’s funeral will be held Friday at 2:30 at Shives Funeral Home in Columbia. He will be buried in Greenlawn Memorial Park. On Saturday, a Celebration of Life service in honor of “Coach” will be held starting at 1 p.m. at Ben Lippen School.