Walter Johnson

Walter Albert Johnson (“Wally”) born September 18, 1937 in Chester, PA to Gladys Jeglum Johnson and Horace M. Johnson, died at the age of 83 on the morning of December 31, 2020, at his home near Bowling Green, Ohio. He had become ill the previous summer, but his strong will to live for his family brought him through the fall and into the winter. A retired executive at the Potomac Electric Power Company (Pepco) in Washington, DC, he received his BSEE (Electrical Engineering), from Duke University in June 1960. He immediately went to work for Pepco, where he spent his entire working career, and returned to Bethesda, MD, where he had grown up and graduated from Bethesda Chevy Chase High School. Walter served in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1961 to 1969, including six months of active duty. He married Mary Elizabeth English of Perrysburg, Ohio, in September 1959, also a graduate of Duke, and they had two children, William (married to Amy Soule) and Marjorie (married to Gregory Scott Mays). He also leaves a beloved granddaughter, Geneva Mays, his brother, David Merrill Johnson, several cousins, nieces and nephews, as well as a number of honorary grandchildren and great grandchildren. At Pepco, his career progressed from supervising a drafting room (where he said that he “learned to read upside down”) to Manager of the utility’s ground-breaking Control Center and finally as Vice President of Special Projects. As Control Center Manager he often traveled abroad to inspect and purchase special equipment and to give seminars and speeches about the concept of central control for electric power companies. In 1975-76 he was delegated to represent Pepco at the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, CA, as part of its start-up program, a company created by the utilities that supported it. After a year in Palo Alto, he returned to Pepco, to become manager of the projected Control Center, to be built in a secluded spot in Maryland, and brought into service in February 1976. On June 10,1996, he was the subject of an extended article in The Washington Post Metro Section, entitled “When a Storm Blows Through, He’s Pepco’s Man in Charge.” Earlier, after the 1965 New York Blackout, he felt that Pepco needed a strong restoration plan for those who lost power in storms and began a project to ensure such a plan. His article was published in Transactions of the IEEE and he was elected Fellow of the IEEE. He held high level positions on various committees that served the Electric Power Industry, such as the American Power Systems Interconnection Committee, now the North American Reliability Corporation, and the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland Interconnection. After retiring from Pepco, now Pepco Holdings, he remained a consultant, traveling to meetings until 2010 when he made his retirement complete. A resident of the Bowling Green area since 2005, he enjoyed gardening, doing crossword puzzles, and cooking, as well as frequent visits by his family. Arrangements were entrusted to Witzler Shank Walker Funeral Home, Perrysburg. Online condolences may be left at www.walkerfuneralhome.com