ROSLYN — Susan Johnson remembers the instant she knew she had found the place where she was meant to be.

It was August 1977.

Johnson, a young single mother from southern California and a friend from Ellensburg stopped in Roslyn on their way to go camping at Cooper Lake.

Johnson was a person searching for a place to put down roots. Roslyn, a former mining town, was a place where many roots were already deeply planted.

She was smitten — immediately taken with what she calls “the cohesiveness of the community” and the natural beauty that surrounded it.

“It was instant,” she says of that moment. “I was standing on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and the highway (in downtown Roslyn) and saying, ‘This is where I want to live.’ In one square mile, I could see the city hall, the library, the church on the ridge. I could walk up through the cemeteries and see the history of the town.”

Johnson went back to California, sold her VW bug, bought a 1957 pickup, packed up her belongings, her young son and her dog and came to Ellensburg. In 1978, she moved to Roslyn.

She got a job with the Forest Service and it was there she met Doug Johnson, the man who would become her husband. Johnson, now a math teacher at Ellensburg High School, also had a young son. Married in 1980, their family eventually would grow to include two more children, a son and daughter.

Ten years after coming to Roslyn, Susan Johnson was among a handful of community members who organized a group called RIDGE.

“It was during the logging boom across the Northwest,” she says. “When we realized the pace of logging was not a sustainable pace we gathered together to try to promote both a sustainable environment and economy. We were citizens’ voices saying, ‘Let’s work for sustainability.’ That was the era more regulations came in to protect habitat, wildlife, water and land. We had a voice in that.”

Johnson, a stay-at-home mom who occasionally worked as a substitute teacher, found herself in the role of a full-time volunteer working seven days a week for the cause. 

After Johnson testified at a meeting, the Commissioner of Public Lands invited RIDGE to become a participant in the Sustainable Forestry Roundtable, a group that included state and county representatives as well as representatives from the Audubon Society, timber companies and the Department of Wildlife.

By then, her youngest child was in kindergarten.

“Ray Owens was a county commissioner. So he was representing Kittitas County at the roundtable. So he and I and my little daughter would go to all these meetings all over the state,” she says.

By 1991, Johnson’s focus and energy were shifting to education. She became a teacher at Easton School and taught there 13 years before moving to Cle Elum-Roslyn High School in 2004 to teach English.

At Cle Elum-Roslyn, Johnson — who says she wants her students to be compassionate, literate and analytical — quickly earned a reputation as an educator who inspired and empowered both students and colleagues.

“Her devotion to her students and her profession is unmatched,” Mark Flatau, superintendent of the Cle Elum-Roslyn School District, said this week. “Her motives are all in the right place too. She sets a high bar in regard to professionalism and work ethic.”

It was Johnson who started, and continues to advise, the school’s Amnesty International Club.

“It’s a strong group,” she says, a note of pride in her voice. “I think the club is important because so many of our students are limited in their experience outside our community. It’s important for them to be able to educate themselves and others about issues of human rights violations. It connects them to the whole of humanity.”

That Johnson should feel such strong sense of mission is no surprise to those familiar with her. She teaches her students the same thing she taught her own children, the same thing that long has been her personal mantra: “Everything you do matters. Everything.”

The daughter of a career Marine Corps officer, she was one of six siblings in a tightly-knit military family that moved every three years.

“We had a strong family focus,” she says. “My parents raised us with a strong sense of honor. They had high expectations of us as human beings. One of the messages we were raised with is that values in life are not materialistic. The value is to love and to serve the higher good.”

That value was reinforced by her Catholic upbringing which Johnson says “really did play a major role in defining my values of honor and integrity and thinking beyond yourself to serve others.”

Her influence and impact haven’t gone unnoticed.

She was named Washington State Teacher of the Year for 2009, recognition that brought with it the opportunity to meet President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama in a Rose Garden ceremony, attend a reception at the home of Joe and Jill Biden, meet with Gov. Christine Gregoire, travel the state to address various groups on the issues in education she believes are most important — and throw out the opening pitch at a Mariners game.

“What being State Teacher of the Year has done is allowed me to celebrate our community and small school district,” she says. “You cannot become Teacher of the Year unless you are in an environment that fosters excellence. I really want to get that message out. I’ve been honored to represent our district.”

Roslyn’s Ellie Belew met Johnson through RIDGE and the two women have been friends ever since.

“She’s inspirational, and she has contributed so much for so long,” says Belew, who says she believes Johnson aims not just educate intellectually but also to educate in such a way that a student becomes a better person. “She’s a lifelong learner and she shares that joy with everybody.”

What makes Johnson so effective in influencing people, Belew says, is that “she takes time to get her own mind and heart straight and because of that she has incredible power because she speaks from that (self-knowledge).”

In addition to her role in the Cle Elum-Roslyn district, Johnson is also co-director of the Central Washington Writing Project at Central Washington University, a program that aims to help teachers become better at teaching writing. She’s been involved with the program since 1992.

“That’s really my professional home,” she says. “It really defines me as a professional.”

As it has always been, her focus remains on both personal and professional growth. She is working to become a National Board Certified teacher.

Johnson, who has been named the 2009 Person of the Year for Kittitas County, did not know she had been chosen to receive the honor when she was asked earlier this week how she envisions her ultimate legacy.

“I go straight back to how my parents raised me,” she said, “to be a person of honor and integrity.”