Inge Elly Johnson
May 13, 1920 - August 31, 2009
Inge Elly Schepler Eiriksson Johnson was born in Reykjavik Iceland on May 13, 1920 to Halldor Eiriksson and Elly Schepler Eiriksson. She grew up skiing, horseback riding and adventuring with her family with whom she was very close.
Inge moved to Urbana, Illinois in the fall of 1942 to attend the University of Illinois studying biochemistry. She came by convoy from Iceland to New York due to WWII. Normally she would have been educated in Europe but her father felt she would be safer in the United States.
She travelled to Seattle to spend the 1945 Christmas holidays with Jakobina Johnson’s family in Ballard. Close family friends. John Leo Johnson had been discharged from the Army Air Corp in November 1945 and had made it back to Ballard and stopped by Jakobina’s for his third Christmas dinner that night (having grown up with her sons) and met a beautiful young woman from Iceland. They fell in love and were engaged in a week.
Inge went back to Urbana and with six months left to graduate, packed up her things and went back to John. They were married March 1, 1946 and were married for over 60 years. As Mom said when Dad passed, “He was a good man and a good man is hard to find. We had many good years together”. They loved and respected each other always.
John and Inge started “Fortune Productions” on Ballard Avenue May 1, 1959 and worked side by side until retiring in 1994 enjoying the community and friendships on Ballard Avenue.
They built their home at 8018 31st Avenue NW in Ballard in 1956 and enjoyed 50 years there raising their family. John & Inge helped start the Icelandic Club of Greater Seattle in 1964. They were very involved in the Icelandic community and received an honor from the Icelandic Club January 25, 2007. Inge spent many hours volunteering at the Nordic Heritage Museum. Something she enjoyed very much.
John & Inge enjoyed raising their family, summering at their cabin on Lake Whatcom, camping trips around the northwest with the family and later together in their camper van even venturing up the Al-Can Highway to Alaska in 1988. She enjoyed reading and read everything. She was a walking encyclopedia.
She will be remembered as a very sweet, loving woman who enjoyed her family and was devoted to her children and grandchildren. She was preceded in death by two sons, Paul Stephan Johnson and Eric Thor Johnson and her beloved husband John.
She leaves behind her son and daughter-in-law Robert Carl and Shauna Lee Johnson of Ballard, her daughter Ellen Louise Johnson of Friday Harbor, WA, her son Kurt Daniel Johnson of Seattle, WA, her granddaughter Lauren Kristin Johnson of Ballard, grandsons Jacob Robert Johnson of Ballard and John Daniel Johnson of Friday Harbor, her sister Elsa E. Guðjónsson and brother Carl J. Eiriksson of Kopavogur, Iceland.
We miss her very much but know that she is with Dad and they are dancing together again.
Donations in lieu of flowers can be made to the Nordic Heritage Museum in Ballard
Published September 16, 2009 in the Ballard News Tribune.
