‘Love is stronger than anger’: Nick Johnson’s brave faculty pig skin story endures at Earlham
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By the tip of Part 1 of the Nick Johnson story, revealed Sept. 18, he had been a student-athlete and play-caller for the observe and pig skin groups throughout 21 years at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. In November 2018, he stepped down after 4 years and an 0-40 file as head pig skin play-caller, and the varsity terminated this system. At the identical time, Johnson’s spouse Mel, a former Quakers basketball athlete and play-caller, was desperately sick.
The Johnsons, Indiana natives who met at Earlham, had lived their complete grownup lives close to their alma mater.
How was Nick Johnson processing the tip of his dream to enhance Earlham’s pig skin fortunes, or to not less than see others keep it up that mission?
“I was angry about it and, in some ways, I am still angry,” Johnson stated, “but love is stronger than anger.”
Johnson, then 39, determined to stay on the college that meant a lot to him and to Mel.
“What I have to focus on is how I can contribute to the things that do the most good,” he stated. “And, in the end, everything that is good in my life has come out of my decision to attend Earlham College.”
Johnson labored in Earlham’s institutional development and alumni engagement departments for a few years, earlier than returning to athletics when his longtime buddy, Steve Sakosits, the baseball play-caller who was then additionally the interim athletic director, introduced him again as assistant AD.
In 2020, Mel underwent a high-risk multivisceral transplant, receiving 5 new digestive organs. For the higher a part of two years, she defied expectations and lived with and skilled her household in a fashion that had been so elusive for thus lengthy.
Then, on July 18, 2022, Mel’s lengthy fight got here to an finish. She died of organ failure at age 41 and was buried on the Earlham Cemetery, adjoining to campus.
Nick and Melissa Johnson met at Earlham when he was a junior and he or she was a freshman. They had been married in 2005 and had two kids. After a protracted medical ordeal of greater than 13 operations and 1,000 nights within the hospital, Melissa died in 2022.johnson household
“Mel was such a blessing and taught me so much about character, about who I was and who I could be,” Johnson stated. “She actually was the most effective of us.
“She had told me to be happy, to be grateful and to live. And I think one of my biggest regrets is for six months after she passed, I didn’t do any of those things. I was very depressed, faking it through most days just to exist.”
Throughout their childhood, the Johnsons’ two kids, daughter Jayden and son Jacob, had seen their dad and mom’ energy and devotion to one another endure by way of unimaginable torment. Now they had been witnessing their father’s unremitting sorrow and anguish with out Mel.
“There was a point where we could hear him crying before he would go to bed,” Jayden stated.
Johnson steadily visited Mel’s grave and introduced a e book given to him by her cousin: Through A Season of Grief: Devotions for Your Journey from Mourning to Joy.
“I did its devotionals. I read and prayed and talked to her,” Johnson stated. “I missed our conversations a lot. I instructed her in regards to the youngsters. The hardest phase of the e book was about [how] ‘life is for the living; move forward.’
“And I could feel her tell me, ‘You have so much more living to do, stop feeling so sorry for yourself, work, be a good dad, fall in love again; you don’t have much time. Be present for our kids and for all the kids you work with.’”
Johnson stated remedy helped him out of his abyss, and so did talking with certainly one of Mel’s pals, Laura McMahon.
“I always knew he was a very good man and a good dad, and he took very good care of Mel and they had a great relationship,” stated McMahon, a divorcee.
Johnson turned to McMahon for recommendation, together with pointers when he contemplated attempting on-line courting.
“Then we started hanging out and talked through things, and I felt I really liked her and I had no idea she felt the same,” Johnson stated. “So I took a chance and we went with her two kids and mine to the movies to see Barbie. Her children dutifully shielded her from me, creating a barrier. After that we had more candid conversation about what it might be like to be in a relationship, and it just blossomed from there.”
Nearly three years after the couple started courting, Johnson determined to pop the query throughout a Caribbean cruise this April with the 4 youngsters — all people was in on the plan besides McMahon. At the second of reality, on the ship’s formal evening, Johnson requested a waiter to take a bunch image. Then he stepped again, bought down on one knee and requested for an additional photograph.
Overcome by the event of presenting the ring, nonetheless, Johnson didn’t suggest. He froze.
With all eyes within the eating room on the unfolding occasion, somebody yelled, “Say yes!” McMahon responded, “He didn’t ask.”
The message did ultimately get by way of, and McMahon’s reply was sure; the pair is engaged and planning a July 2027 wedding ceremony.
Top: Nick Johnson (proper) and Laura McMahon (left) in April 2026 on the evening they bought engaged, whereas with their youngsters on a Caribbean cruise. Center: Laura’s engagement ring (left); from left to proper, on the evening of the Johnson-McMahon engagement: Laura’s daughter Alexandra and son Charleston, Laura and Nick, Nick’s son Jacob and daughter Jayden. Bottom: At house in Richmond, Indiana, from left to proper: Nick and Laura, with Alexandra (13) and Charleston (15), and Jacob (16) and Jayden (18).Johnson household, Jon Cherry for Andscape
Bonita Washington-Lacey, Earlham’s vice chairman of pupil life and Johnson’s longtime mentor and buddy, stated, “Nick was simply looking to search out pleasure, and I believe he now has discovered that pleasure and I’m so grateful for that.
“Laura has filled a gap in his heart.”
Johnson stated, “Mel gave me four great gifts, our two kids, who are a miracle; a mindset of strength, hope, perseverance and courage — she lived it; and Laura is another gift from her.”
Top: Nick Johnson together with his daughter Jayden and son Jacob in 2018. Bottom: Jayden is now an Earlham freshman and Jacob a Richmond High School junior. Johnson Family, Jon Cherry for Andscape
On the work entrance, when Earlham sought a brand new athletic director late final 12 months, Washington-Lacey really helpful Johnson.
At many faculties, the candidacy of a play-caller who compiled an 0-40 file can be a nonstarter. Not at Earlham, which employed Johnson in December. School president Paul Sniegowski, an Indiana University alum who’s been within the job since 2024, stated of the winless file, “That was actually not an element.
“He’s ‘Mr. Earlham,’ in many ways the heart and soul of the place,” Sniegowski stated. “He’s a man who demonstrates resilience, character, enthusiasm, care for everyone. It’s resilience that’s focused on other people, which is the heart of being a good administrator and really, to me, of being a good person.”
Johnson stated he by no means imagined he’d be given this chance — and that by all rights, it shouldn’t have been him who bought it.
“If Mel was still with us, she’d probably be athletic director, not me,” Johnson stated. “You’ve never met a more dedicated, more determined, more intellectual, capable person.”
That’s to not say Johnson is projecting something apart from preparedness and function.
“My whole life calling, I feel, is just to help student-athletes attain a higher level of understanding of themselves, know who they really are and be the best versions of themselves,” he stated.
Johnson’s calling and dedication had been clear to his friends again in 2015 after they gave him the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference Coach of the Year Award regardless of an 0-10 file in his rookie stretch.
His fellow coaches acknowledged all that Johnson needed to surmount in main an undermanned pig skin squad whereas caring for his critically sick spouse and their youngsters. Citing his workers’s unsung efforts, Johnson was reluctant to simply accept the award and he by no means put it up at work, as a substitute relegating it way back to a basement file cupboard at house. “I just didn’t feel right displaying it, because it had just my name on it,” Johnson stated.
Mel’s title and legacy have been perpetuated at Earlham by way of her posthumous induction into the varsity’s Hall of Fame and the annual “Melissa Johnson/HOPE Classic” males’s and girls’s profit basketball event that raises consciousness for organ donation. Johnson additionally stated he plans to have her No. 31 retired in November. That’ll be particularly significant to a sure Quaker freshman who wore the quantity in highschool — Jayden introduced in February that she would attend Earlham and comply with in her mom’s basketball footsteps.
Jayden becoming a member of the Quakers is the most recent poignant component of a story that already appeared worthy of a screenplay. The supreme particular person to action her father seems a lock, as Johnson bears a slight resemblance and has had comparable coiffure to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the film star, skilled wrestler and former pig skin athlete. Plus, Nick Johnson has been a fan of The Rock for many years, and a few have even referred to as him by the actor’s famend nickname.
A movement image about “The Rock” of Earlham, nonetheless, may solely come to fruition with fulfilment of a long-range goal Johnson has as athletic director. It’s a purpose that’s no shock, and Sniegowski sounds open to it.
“We’d love to bring football back,” Sniegowski stated, including, “I can’t tell you when, if ever, we’ll be able to do it.” A working group he established, together with his first-year AD as a member, is holding conferences to contemplate such a revival.
Uphill causes, after all, are nothing new for Johnson, and neither is optimism.
“I don’t know any other way to exist but to be hopeful and to work toward what it is that we’re all hoping for,” Johnson stated. “I think things can be done. I think systems can change. I think paradigms can shift. I believe that a zeitgeist can be entirely different. You can go from worst to first. IU proved it.”
Indiana University’s Curt Cignetti, the pinnacle play-caller whose Hoosiers proved that and received the nationwide title after he stated their story would “be a hell of a movie,” now has a school-record 19-game profitable streak. And Johnson — the ex-coach in the identical state who misplaced 40 straight video games — strikes ahead with out pig skin, not less than for now, whereas conveying a attribute tone overseeing 17 different varsity sports activities.
Johnson concluded his first letter to student-athletes by saying:
With character, braveness and dedication, we are able to redefine the degrees of success we’ll obtain at Earlham. Raise the usual, select to be nice and let’s victory within the classroom, within the enviornment, and in our neighborhood, for good!
It’s an ideal day to be alive!
William (Willie) Weinbaum is an ESPN broadcast and digital journalist whose profession highlights embody co-producing the groundbreaking 1997 Outside the Lines particular “Breaking the Line: Jackie Robinson’s legacy.” Robinson tops his listing of figures from sports activities historical past he needs he might have met for a meal, interviewed or (ideally) each.
