Flora Johnson, a prolific Chicago journalist remembered as ‘bohemian' and ‘eccentric', dies

Chicago Tribune

a day ago

Flora Johnson was a highly visible and prolific feature writer and editor for magazines and newspapers in Chicago for more than two decades.
Johnson began with the Chicago Seed underground newspaper and went on to reporting and editing positions at Chicago magazine, the Chicago Reader, the now-defunct American Medical News and the short-lived Chicago Times magazine. She also contributed freelance articles to the Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times.
'Flora was a bohemian — creative, open-minded and eccentric, which made her a very effective advocate for American Medical News,' said Brian McCormick, a former reporter and editor at American Medical News. 'It also made her a damned good editor.'
Johnson, 76, died of heart disease May 30 at Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre hospital in Halifax, Nova Scotia, according to a friend, Susan Stevenson. Johnson had lived in Nova Scotia since 2002, and formerly resided in the Albany Park neighborhood and in Redmond, Washington.
Born Flora Cordis Johnson in Kingsville, Texas, Johnson moved to Chicago to attend Northwestern University. Johnson was part of Chicago's underground media scene, starting in her early 20s. She wrote for the Chicago Seed and was also a program host for an underground broadcast version, called Radio Free Chicago.
Johnson then co-founded Chicago 606 magazine, a small publication that lasted for just five issues. Johnson had hoped that Chicago 606 would be the successor to the Chicago Seed.
'Flora's presence at the Seed contributed to empowering women in alternative journalism and politics,' said retired Northwestern University journalism professor Abe Peck, who was the Seed's editor from the late 1960s until 1970. 'She was a feisty countercultural feminist, working alongside men but not shy about kicking macho butt.'
Johnson was hired in 1973 as a staff reporter at the Chicagoan magazine during one of several reboots of the Chicagoan, a magazine whose nameplate had its origins in the 1920s. In the first issue of the magazine's short-lived incarnation of the 1970s, Johnson wrote an article about Chicago supermarkets. A year later, she profiled then-Chicago Today reporter and future comedy writer Bruce Vilanch for the August 1974 issue.
From 1974 until 1977, Johnson was a staff writer for Chicago magazine, a successor to the Chicagoan. In 1976, she wrote a piece for the magazine about which constituencies would be disadvantaged by the revitalization of the Uptown neighborhood.
Even amid full-time jobs, Johnson was a steady freelance writer for other publications as well, including Student Lawyer magazine and the Sun-Times. In October 1974, she wrote a review for the Sun-Times on a book about flight attendants, 'Sex Objects in the Sky,' that Chicago Journalism Review co-founder Christopher Chandler had co-authored.
A 1978 Student Lawyer article, which was reprinted in the Tribune, lamented what she judged to be some U.S. Supreme Court justices' poor writing.
'The justices give the impression that they are using words to mask their lack of anything to say,' Johnson wrote.
In 1977, Johnson left Chicago magazine to join the Chicago Daily News for a brief spell, working first as a columnist co-authoring the gossip column 'Grapevine,' and then as a feature writer. She left the paper the same year and started a public relations firm with her future husband, Johnson Skelly & Associates. Clients included the nonprofit group Citizens for a Better Environment, for which she created a newsletter.
In the 1970s and '80s, Johnson was a contributor to the Chicago Reader, writing about sometimes-controversial topics, including how public schools treat students of different races, medical ethics and the chemistry of the brain.
'She wrote some amazing things,' said Nina Sandlin, a longtime friend and occasional Reader contributor whose late husband, Lee, was a longtime writer for the Reader. 'She believed in thoughtful, incisive, gem-like writing. She challenged your thinking. She meant to be provocative in her articles and they were provocative.'
Former Reader jazz critic Neil Tesser, a friend and onetime housemate, recalled Johnson's focus at the Reader being 'on the sciences, both physical and socially and I recall her reading various journals to turn up new or ongoing research in these fields in order to translate such developments for a general readership.'
'I was always impressed by the fact that she could handle that sort of weighty subject matter yet still craft wicked takedowns of political and legal bulls—,' Lesser said. 'She was a terrific writer, able to lift the essence of tricky subjects out of the jargon, and adept at turning phrases that would have pleased Frank Bruni.'
In 1986, Johnson joined the staff of American Medical News, first as a one-day-a-week copy editor and outside contributions editor. She was hired full time as editor of a newly created feature section, called ADL, for the medical term 'activities of daily living.' Her role was eventually called special projects editor.
'Flora created the unique (ADL) section at American Medical News, which brought to life the day-to-day realities of physicians practicing medicine as well as telling vivid stories of physicians' lives, their interests and other activities,' said former American Medical News reporter Harris Meyer. 'Flora's ADL section brought something entirely new to the business-and policy-oriented weekly newspaper that was refreshing. She loved writers and pushed them in a loving way to do their best work. And she was fearless in letting stories go in directions that other editors would have been afraid to go.'
Ronni Scheier, a friend and former American Medical News deputy editor, recalled Johnson's 'graceful, seemingly effortless' writing, 'no matter how complex or technical the content.'
'She laughed when I asked how it came so easily,' Scheier said. 'Her secret, she confided, was never to compose with her byline on the page. It was only as 'not Flora' that her words would flow, to be reunited later with their author.'
In 1989, Johnson initially took vacation time from American Medical News to serve as the editor of Chicago Times, the highbrow but little-funded city magazine co-founded by Todd Fandell, a former Tribune assistant business editor and the former editor of Advertising Age magazine. Johnson then cut her time back at American Medical News to three days a week while moonlighting at Chicago Times.
One of the Chicago Times stories Johnson edited was the award-winning 'Guilty Until Proven Innocent' — written by her friend Rob Warden — about penal injustice in Illinois.
After overseeing five issues in a nine-month tenure at the helm, an exhausted Johnson returned to American Medical News full time in 1990, and Chicago Times folded several months later.
McCormick recalled that one of his proudest moments at American Medical News was working on a special issue that Johnson coordinated regarding efforts to frame gun violence as a public health issue.
'(That) concept … seemed radical to many readers in the early 1990s,' he said.
In 1993, Johnson left American Medical News to move with her husband to a house they had built in 1987 in a rural area east of Redmond, Washington. While there, she undertook a career pivot away from journalism and took her interest in gardening to a new level, becoming an advocate for the use of native plants and running a garden design firm called Flower of the Heart Garden Design.
While in Washington, Johnson authored two books, 'Gardening for Butterflies in Western Washington' and 'Gardening for Hummingbirds in Western Washington,' and she also wrote a regular column on wildlife gardening for the publication Northwest Garden News.
Johnson left Washington in 2002 to move to Nova Scotia, where her parents had owned a farm.
There were no immediate survivors. Johnson was twice married to noted video game designer Timothy Skelly. The couple divorced and then remarried. He died in 2020.
A celebration of life service is being planned.