Johnson, Philip A.

Johnson was associated with the Aspinook Co., Griswold, Conn.; the company was involved in bleaching, dyeing, printing and finishing of cotton, linen, silk and other textiles. It ceased operations in 1937, at which time the Aspinook Corp. in Jewett City, Conn., was formed. Johnson was one of the principal underwriters of the new company and served as president and treasurer. He also worked at the Hampton Co., Easthampton, Mass., was an adviser to the federal government in the 1930's, and in 1942 was appointed to the U.S. Office of Price Administration.

A television broadcasting legend in New Orleans, Phil Johnson worked for nearly 40 years at the city's top-ranked CBS affiliate, WWL-TV. During his career, he served as promotion director, documentary producer, news director, assistant general manager, and editorialist. Johnson retired from WWL-TV in 1999. A graduate of New Orleans' Jesuit High School (1946) and Loyola University (1950), Johnson began his journalism career at the now defunct Item newspaper. His print experience also included a brief stint in print journalism in Chicago, and a prestigious Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University in 1959. He would return home, at the dawn of the local television era, taking a position as promotion director at WWL-TV in 1960, just threee years after the station signed on the air. As a professional communicator, Johnson received countless honors and awards. His writing and narration of television documentaries earned him an Emmy and three George Foster Peabody Awards - the Pulitzer Prize of television: in 1970, for a documentary called "Israel: The New Frontier;" in 1972, for "China '72: A Hole in the Bamboo Curtain," which featured footage filmed by the first non-network American television news team allowed into the Communist nation in almost 25 years; and in 1982, for "The Search for Alexander." Johnson also served as a war correspondence, reporting for the station from Vietnam, Beirut, and Israel. New Orleans viewers may know him best for the 10,000 broadcast editorials he produced throughout his tenure as editorialist at WWL-TV, presenting the station's editorial opinion on local, state and national topics from 1962-1999. In 1997, Johnson was named to the New Orleans Broadcasting Hall of Fame and merited a Lifetime Achievement Award from his peers in the Press Club of New Orleans. In 1999, Johnson's alma mater, Loyola University New Orleans, awarded him its Integritas Vitae Award, the university's highest honor for an individual "with a high moral character in a lifetime of unselfish service without expectation of material reward of public recognition."