Wendell Andrew Leroy Johnson

Background

Johnson was born on April 16, 1906, in Roxbury, Kansas, United States; the son of Andrew Johnson and Mary (Tarnstrom) Johnson.

Education

Despite being plagued by severe stuttering from an early age, Wendell was successful academically and athletically in his public school years. In high school, he played basketball and baseball and was captain of both teams. He was president of his senior class and valedictorian as well.

Johnson attended McPherson College in McPherson, Kansas, United States for two years. A sympathetic teacher there suggested that he consider attending the State University of Iowa, where the problem of stuttering was just beginning to be studied. In 1926 Johnson enrolled at the State University of Iowa in Ames, Iowa, United States with the intention of becoming a writer and poet. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English, with honors. In 1929 he received a Master of Arts degree in psychology and in 1931 a Doctor of Philosophy degree in psychology and physiology.

Career

Shortly after his arrival in Iowa City, however, Johnson became one of the first subjects of study in the nascent speech pathology laboratory. As he later described it, "That turned out to be the beginning of a long apprenticeship as a professional white rat." It was also the beginning of what became his life work, the study of speech disorders, and the larger question of human communication.

During the 1930s, Johnson and his colleagues scientifically tested and discarded the current theories on the causes of stuttering, eventually coming to the conclusion that it was neither a physical nor an emotional problem, but a psychosocial problem, a problem of interaction between stutterers and their listeners. As he put it at one time, “Stuttering often begins not in the child’s mouth, but in the parent’s ear.”

In the late 1930s, while recovering from an emergency appendectomy, Johnson found the time to read and study Alfred Korzybski’s Science and Sanity, the seminal work on semantic theory. The book changed John- son’s life and the direction of his academic research. He began to see the field of speech pathology in the broader context of the whole question of the nature of human communication. One of the first results of that change was a course on general semantics designed and first taught by Johnson in 1939, one of the first such courses in the world. Since there was no text for such a course, Johnson wrote his own, People in Quandaries: The Semantics of Personal Adjustment, which remained a standard text in the field for many years.

At the State University of Iowa, his responsibilities were also increasing. In 1943 he became director of the Iowa Speech Clinic. In 1947 he was named chief administrative officer of the Iowa Program in Speech Pathology, and in 1951 he was appointed chairman of the Council on Speech Pathology and Audiology, the predecessor of the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology. Despite his broadened interests and increased responsibilities, he never lost his interest in research on the causes and treatment of stuttering. He published several books on the subject in the 1950s and 1960s. And in the midst of all that he found time to serve as the editor of the Journal of Speech Disorders, from 1943 to 1948.

A heart attack in 1955 forced Johnson to resign most of his responsibilities, but he continued as a professor in the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology until his death in 1965. And he continued to do research and to write voluminously on many topics of interest to him right up until his death, which occurred at his desk while he was at work revising an article on speech defects for the Encyclopedia Britannica.

An unfortunate ethical lapse in his research resulted in some notoriety and a lawsuit many years after his death. In the late 1930s, Johnson had approved the research design of one of his doctoral students, who proposed to use orphans at a local home in a stuttering experiment without their knowledge or consent. The lawsuit claimed that the experiment permanently scarred many of those children. The State University of Iowa settled with the litigants and issued a public apology.

Achievements

• Johnson is remembered as one of the University of Iowa's most prominent pioneering researchers. All his life he was searching for the cure for stuttering.
  
  In 1968 the State University of Iowa honored Johnson by naming the new building for the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology the Wendell Johnson Speech and Hearing Center.

Works

More photos

• book

  • THE CONTROL DISCIPLINE 2005
  • Stuttering and What you can do About it 1961
  • The Onset of Stuttering 1959
  • Your most enchanted listener 1956
  • Speech Handicapped School Children 1948
  • People in Quandaries 1946
  • Because I stutter 1930

Membership

Johnson was a fellow of the American Psychological Association and a diplomate in clinical and abnormal psychology of the American Board of Examiners in Professional Psychology. Other affiliations included the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Speech Association of America, the International Society for Logopedics and Phoniatrics, the National Society for Crippled Children and Adults, and the International Society for Rehabilitation of the Disabled.

• 

  Johnson was elected president of the American Speech and Hearing Association.

  American Speech and Hearing Association , United States

  1950

• Johnson became a founder of the American Speech and Hearing Foundation.

  American Speech and Hearing Foundation , United States

  1956

• Johnson was elected president of the International Society of General Semantics.

  International Society of General Semantics

  1945

• Johnson served as president of the International Society for General Semantics.

  International Society for General Semantics

  1945 - 1947

Personality

The personal qualities that brought Johnson the esteem and affection of most who knew him can scarcely be inventoried. He had an unfailing interest in the accomplishments of others, tolerance for opposing viewpoints, and a rich sense of humor coupled with original wit. Above all, he had deep compassion for people and their problems.

Connections

On May 31, 1929, Wendell married Edna Bockwoldt, whom he had met when they were both undergraduate English students at the State University of Iowa. They had two children, Nicholas and Katherine.

Father:

Andrew Robert Johnson

Mother:

Mary Helena Tarnstrom

Spouse:

Edna Bockwoldt

Daughter:

Katherine L. Johnson

Son:

Nicholas Johnson

References

• Universal suffrage, and complete equality in citizenship, the safeguards of democratic institutions
  1865
• The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa Iowa has been blessed with citizens of strong character who have made invaluable contributions to the state and to the nation. In the 1930s alone, such towering figures as John L. Lewis, Henry A. Wallace, and Herbert Hoover hugely influenced the nation’s affairs.
  2008