For 44 years, Bruce Johnson was at home in Washington, D.C., his familiar voice reporting from the streets of the city and at the anchor desk for WUSA, TV’s Channel 9.
Following his death on April 3 at the age of 71, Bruce Johnson’s Memorial Mass was held eight days later at his spiritual home, St. Augustine Church, where he was a longtime parishioner.
“Bruce was formed into a man of faith,” said Father John Mudd, St. Augustine’s former pastor who was the homilist at the Mass.
The priest noted that the award-winning broadcast journalist had attended Immaculate Heart of Mary School in Louisville and then two years at Sacred Heart Seminary in Cincinnati, and “he recognized his call to service as a very young person, and he recognized as a young man that he had a responsibility to use his God-given talents he received in the service of the people in the communities that he was asked to serve as a journalist.”
At the beginning of the Mass, Father Patrick Smith, the pastor of St. Augustine, noted that he like many Black residents of the city had grown up watching Bruce Johnson, and been inspired by him and other pioneer African American TV journalists in Washington like Max Robinson and Jim Vance.
“They looked like us. They spoke for us, and we were so profoundly blessed to have them,” he said.
Before the Mass, about 60 members of the Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity – of which Johnson was a life member – stood and led a prayer service in his honor.
In his homily, Father Mudd pointed out how the first reading at the Mass from Isaiah 43:1-2 – which included God’s promise to His people that “When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown,” – had inspired the title of Johnson’s recently published autobiography, Surviving Deep Waters.
That book, published by Post Hill Press, has the subtitle, “A Legendary Reporter’s Story of Overcoming Poverty, Race, Violence and His Mother’s Deepest Secret.”
Noting how Johnson was such a skilled and dedicated street reporter, Father Mudd pointed out how the church that morning was filled with friends he had made along the way. “He made everyone he met feel appreciated, supported and cared for.”
At the Mass, a prayer was offered for journalists, “that they will be fair, transparent and honest… paying particular attention to the poor and forgotten.” Many who spoke later at the Mass emphasized how those qualities were central to Johnson’s life and work.
A prayer was also offered for medical professionals, especially those dedicated to the care of heart and cancer patients. Johnson had survived a heart attack and cancer and had done reports about those health issues to aid viewers.
Those offering reflections on Bruce Johnson after Communion included LaToya Foster, the spokeswoman for D.C. Mayor Muriel Bower, who delivered a tribute from the mayor.
The mayor’s message noted how Johnson had earned 22 Emmy Awards for his coverage of the city of Washington and its people over the years.
“Bruce got the story, because he got us,” the mayor’s message said.
Mayor Bowser in her message said, “I am forever grateful how Bruce used his voice for good and inspired all of us to do the same.”
James Brown, the host of NFL Today on CBS, noted how Johnson was the first person to greet him when he began his sports reporting career at Channel 9.
“We all knew him as an intrepid reporter and anchor who was always exceedingly well prepared,” Brown said, adding that he admired Johnson’s ability “to be very succinct, incisive and ask penetrating questions. It was always about the story.” He said the veteran journalist had “a singular focus on getting the story, with no ulterior motives. He only wanted the truth.”
Also speaking was Lesli Foster, the weeknight anchor for WUSA9, who said that reading Johnson’s book was like hearing his voice again.
“As he writes in his book, he wanted to be a difference maker. To us, he was,” she said, noting that he was a mentor to many of his colleagues at the TV station, who regarded him “as a legend and a friend.”
Gordon Peterson, formerly the longtime anchor at WUSA, said, “Bruce Johnson was one of the best, if not the best, urban reporters in this country. Bruce loved the streets, and he loved the people in the streets.”
Peterson noted how Johnson once reported on a man who told him how he had survived homelessness – and had later gone on to graduate from the law school at Howard University. “What a story!” the retired anchor said.
Concluding his remarks, Peterson said that in recent times, “Bruce ended every conversation we had saying, ‘I love you.’ I love you back, my dear friend… You are the very best of us.”
In comments emailed to the Catholic Standard after the Memorial Mass, Johnson’s longtime colleague at Channel 9, Andrea Roane – a veteran anchor there who retired in 2018, two years before Johnson – said, “Bruce was the first person to welcome me into the Channel 9 newsroom 41 years ago. It didn’t take me long to see what made him an outstanding journalist.”
Roane noted, “Bruce was a storyteller, but more to the point, he was a truth teller. He worked hard at getting it right, asking probing questions and listening carefully to the answers. He wanted to make a difference as a journalist, reporting on the powerful as well as the people on the margins in the city he loved. He took us to quadrants of the city where many had never traveled. He took us around the world covering capital cities. Wherever the assignment took him, he believed his purpose was to help us understand why we should care, how our lives and experiences were connected.”
In Surviving Deep Waters, Johnson wrote about how his two years at Sacred Heart Seminary “were transformative for this poor Black kid,” providing him with a good education and inspiring him to seek a better life.
Later in the book, he wrote about being a journalist covering the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, and learning how years earlier, one of his friends at the seminary had been abused by a priest there. Later, he reported on how former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, once the popular archbishop of Washington, had been defrocked after a Vatican investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct involving minors and adults.
Reflecting on the crisis, Johnson wrote, “I wouldn’t leave my church. Where would I go?”
The journalist covered two consistories in Rome, when McCarrick had been elevated to the College of Cardinals in 2001, and when then-Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl became a cardinal in 2010. In the book, Johnson noted how he reported from St. Peter’s Square in 2013 when Pope Francis was elected, and he co-anchored WUSA’s coverage of Pope Francis’s visit to Washington in 2015 and watched proudly as the St. Augustine Gospel Choir from his parish sang for the pope at the White House. The parish’s choir sang at Johnson’s Memorial Mass on April 11.
Also in Johnson’s book, he wrote about a story that he wished that he had been able to cover, the elevation of Washington Archbishop Wilton Gregory as the first African American cardinal in November 2020. “If not for the coronavirus pandemic, I would have been there as a working journalist and a grateful former seminarian,” Johnson wrote.
Johnson’s biography in the Funeral Mass program noted that he married his college sweetheart, the former Madge Williams, in 1972, and they divorced in 1994 but remained friends and committed to their two children. Johnson married the former Lori Kae Smith in 2003. In addition to his wife Lori, his survivors include his two children from his first marriage and their spouses, Kurshanna Dean of Washington and her husband Keith; and Brandon Johnson of Bowie and his wife Terri. Bruce Johnson is also survived by Carolyn Smith, a daughter he gained in his second marriage, and by five grandchildren, Shawn Johnson, Jasmine Dean, Miles Johnson-Dean, Braydon Johnson and Carter Johnson.
