Mary Wig Johnson, civic leader and philanthropist, died Tuesday, March 4, of complications from lung cancer, in Laguna Beach, Calif., with family members at her side. She was 89.
Scripps College President Nancy Y. Bekavac, in announcing Johnson’s death to the campus community, said, “All who knew her valued her independence of mind, her clarity of vision, her deep kindness and her complete composure.”
Mary Wig Johnson leaves a unique legacy of service and philanthropy to many organizations in Southern California. Elected to the Scripps College Board of Trustees in 1958, she remained a trustee and an emerita trustee for 44 years until her death. Among her many gifts to the College were the Johnson Chair in Humanities; endowments for faculty research and development, faculty recognition, and student summer research; and the Student Investment Fund. In addition, her civic commitments included the League of Women Voters, Planned Parenthood, California Institute of Technology, Occidental College, The Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens, The Huntington Hospital, League of Women Voters, Pacific Asia Museum and Norton Simon Museum.
Mary Wig Johnson was born on July 25, 1913, in Washington, D.C., to Anna May Bartlett Wig and Rudolph James Wig. The family moved to California in 1917, settling in South Pasadena in 1919, and ultimately moving to San Marino in 1929. After graduating from South Pasadena High School, Mary went on to attend Scripps College, in Claremont, as part of the fifth entering class of that new institution. At the end of her sophomore year, she met J. Stanley Johnson, a graduate student at Caltech, and married him, in 1935, the same year of her college graduation.
With Stan landing a job in Chicago during the depths of the Great Depression, the couple stayed in the Windy City for two years before moving back to Pasadena. A year later, they purchased the assets of a small bankrupt furnace company. Stan ran the company, renamed Holly Heating and Manufacturing, until it was sold in 1955.
Both Mary and Stan were avid outdoors people, and together with other close Pasadena friends, went on several hundred camping trips throughout the southwestern United States and western Mexico, sometimes as many as two dozen per year, even when they were both in their 70s. They also traveled extensively in rural Mexico.
In 1994, Stan Johnson died. A few years later, Mary moved to Palm Springs, where she made her home at Smoke Tree Ranch for the remainder of her life.
Mary Wig Johnson is survived by two of her sons, Donald and Robert Johnson of Laguna Beach, and five grandsons: Shane, Colin, Braden, Nicholas, and Matthew Johnson. Her eldest son, James Stanley II and the father of Shane, died in 1979.
Plans are pending for a memorial service. The family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations in her memory be made to Scripps College or a charity of choice.