William "Bill" Kennard Johnson

William Kennard Johnson died peacefully at his home in Arlington, Virginia, on September 13, 2025.

 

In the valedictorian’s address at his 1977 graduation from Tara High School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Bill said, “The faces we do not recognize are not strangers, but merely friends we haven’t met” — and all who knew Bill knew that he lived by that conviction all the days of his life. Bill could and did make friends with anyone. Some of those friendships lasted decades, others just the length of an airplane flight or the bus ride home from the Metro. Either way, those befriended by Bill Johnson knew the attention, warmth, and genuine love of someone who saw the beauty and worth of every person.

 

Born in Baton Rouge on June 12, 1959, Bill was the third child of Anne and David Johnson. Church, music, academics, sports and service were hallmarks of his growing up. In high school, Bill was active in student government, honor societies, choirs, bands, scouting (he was an Eagle Scout), and even owned his own lawn care business — proving that servant leadership was in his DNA from the beginning. Bill carried on many of these interests through his college years at Louisiana State University (BS summa cum laude in General Studies, 1981). Shortly before he died, Bill participated in a Zoom call during the LSU Tigers football game with lifelong friends from Baton Rouge and LSU. 

 

After graduation, Bill traded Baton Rouge for Botswana, serving as a journeyman from 1981 - 1983 through the International Mission Board. This turned out to be the first step of a lifelong career in ministry that took many forms in a variety of contexts. From Botswana, Bill moved to California to attend Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, where he met Susan Louise Hughey. After he graduated with his Master of Divinity in 1987, Bill and Susan married and moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, where they welcomed daughters Sara (1989) and Anna (1992) and where Bill did Clinical Pastoral Education and served as pastoral minister at Pleasant Plains Baptist Church in Matthews, North Carolina.

 

The family then moved to Arlington, Virginia, where Bill was Associate Pastor at Memorial Baptist Church from 1992-1994. But Bill’s greater passion was for ministry in daily life, rather than in the institutional church. He continued pastoring at Memorial as a volunteer for the rest of his life, but from 1994 to 2010, he served as operations manager for Faith at Work (now Lumunos), a Christian not-for-profit organization that helps people identify and live out their callings in the midst of ordinary life. Bill’s final two jobs, with the National Council of Architectural Review Boards and the American Physical Therapy Association, may have been secular on paper, but they were ministry to Bill — opportunities to serve, support, and care for clients and colleagues at every level of the organizations. 

 

Bill’s marriage to Susan ended with her untimely death in 2006. In 2009, Bill met Carter Echols on a mission trip he was leading to Guatemala, and they married in 2010. Together with Carter, Bill continued to live out his commitments to faith, justice, and service, as they invested in their South Arlington neighborhood, traveled in the US and abroad as they traced the impacts of their family histories, served their church communities, and cheered on their beloved Washington Nationals. They also journeyed together through Bill’s several bouts with cancer. In the last year, Bill was blessed to walk both his daughters down the wedding aisle.

 

Bill had a knack for finding joy in the ordinary (and sometimes unusual!) things of life — it could be coming up with unexpected ways to repurpose things, loving oysters and liver and onions, taking endless pictures of the Air Force Memorial and group photos at the end of friend and family gatherings, or weighing the trash each week in his determination to minimize his landfill contribution.

 

Bill is survived by his wife, Carter Echols; daughters Sara Johnson (Danny Shuster) and Anna Johnson (Michael Smith); mother Anne Johnson; brother David Johnson (Patti); sister Jessica Davis (Steve); and a host of nieces and nephews and friends of all ages.

 

In lieu of flowers, please consider making a donation in Bill’s name to one of these organizations that Bill himself supported:

 

Center for Common Ground

PO Box 235

Ladysmith, VA 22501 

https://www.centerforcommonground.org/

 

Memorial Baptist Church (For their partnership with Impact Community India)

3455 North Glebe Road 

Arlington, VA 22207

https://memorialbaptistchurch.org/

 

Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins

P.O. Box 49143

Baltimore, MD 21297-1029

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/kimmel-cancer-center/make-a-gift/in-lieu-of