William Loy ""Bill"" Johnson

William Loy ""Bill"" Johnson, who came to Denver as a young man known to his friends as ""Wild Thing""-- named for the sixties rock and roll song, and for his exuberance for life -- died on Saturday after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 62. Johnson had traveled the world as a captain in the US Air Force, serving in Texas, Arizona, South Korea and elsewhere. Upon leaving the service in 1973, Johnson obtained his MBA at the University of Colorado and decided to return to the place he'd been stationed during his Air Force service that he'd liked the best: Denver. ""He'd been a real child of the sixties,"" explained his younger brother, Dennis Johnson. ""He had a Corvette and he loved Jimi Hendrix and something about the mountains and the people in Colorado just got to him."" Johnson was born in Clarkesville, GA, on October 23, the son of Loy Johnson, a welder in the aerospace industry, and Marion Johnson, a housewife. The couple moved to Patchogue, New York, when Bill was 5. He went on to achieve an undergraduate degree in business at nearby Adelphia College before enlisting in the Air Force in 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War, to serve as an officer in the Strategic Air Command's 100th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing. Shortly after returning to civilian life in Denver, Johnson took a job with the Internal Revenue Service, and met his future wife, Karen Lea Davis -- known as Kalea -- a managerial supervisor for the Department of Labor for the State of Colorado. ""That was when Wild Thing settled down,"" recalled Dennis Johnson. ""It didn't take him long to realize she was the one."" The two were married on June 7, 1981 and moved to a new house in Aurora, and Johnson began studying to become a Certified Public Accountant, a certification he achieved in 1983. The couple's first child, a daughter they named Brie, was born in 1984. Two years later, Johnson joined the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he became an assistant regional manager, and where he would remain employed until his retirement last month. In 1990, his second child, a son, Brett, was born, and the family moved to Centennial, where husband and wife were still residing at the time of his death. In interviews during the final stages of his illness, Johnson said that despite his impressive career serving his country and working for the government, it was his family and children that made him feel he'd ""done something to make the world a better place,"" as he put it. While deflecting most of the credit to his wife, of whom he said, ""I got very lucky in the wife department,"" he couldn't conceal a smile, despite his extreme physical discomfort, when discussing his children. He was particularly proud of his daughter's position in the Peace Corps, teaching the rural poor in Nicaragua. ""She's doing something very special,"" he said. ""It must have come to her through her mother."" He was equally moved when discussing teenaged Brett, citing his son's athletic prowess and innate intelligence, and what he called ""his good heart."" Johnson added, ""He's really going to be something."" ""Bill's something himself,"" noted his brother, Dennis. ""He was proud of his time in the service and working for the government, almost as much as he was proud of his family, and he was a very honest and upright guy, as military men can be, in Bill's case to an inspiring degree. But I think the thing that spoke best about him was that, at the end, he still had every friend he ever made."" Bill Johnson is survived by his wife Kalea and children Brie and Brett, by his parents Loy and Marion Johnson, of Seattle, Washington, and by his brothers, Thomas of Seattle, and Dennis, of New York City. Rosary, Friday, November 14, 2007 at 10:30 AM with Memorial Mass following at 11:00 AM both at St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church, 19099 East Floyd Avenue, in Aurora, Colorado. Committal Services follow at 1:15 PM at Fort Logan National Cemetery, Area ""C"", 3698 South Sheridan Boulevard, in Denver, Colorado. Share your memories of Bill and condolences with his family by clicking on the ""sign guestbook"" button below.