Walking It Like You Talk It!: The Extraordinary Life of Donna Sue Johnson

Donna Sue Johnson isn’t just a person. She isn’t just a social worker or advocate for the mentally ill and the LGBTQ+ senior community via the SAGE organization. Donna Sue Johnson is an event.

To begin my interview with her, I ask the insightful and well-considered question: “How are you doing?”

“I’m doing spectacular!” she replies enthusiastically. “I’m six feet above ground without dirt on my face! It’s a good day!”

I ask about her origins. Johnson was born September 5, 1956, in Valley Forge, Pa., but puts on a broad Georgia accent when she proudly says, “I’m from the South — South Jersey!” She relates that her grandmother was one of the first Black Americans to own a home in Willingboro, N.J., one of the first pre-planned communities of its type. This sense of place and identity carries over into her self-description as “A Big Black Beautiful Bohemian Bougie Buddhist Butch!”

“I was blessed to be in a family that celebrated academic excellence, that celebrated reading, that celebrated learning new words,” Johnson recalls. Her grandfather, a physician, was the first president of the NAACP in Burlington County, N.J., and helped desegregate restaurants and schools there. Her mother graduated from Fisk University, her aunt graduated from Tuskegee University, and her grandfather graduated from Lincoln University alongside such luminaries as Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall. The personal legacy of these historically Black schools helped cement Johnson’s love of learning. Her father was a police officer, and her mother was a Special Education teacher.

Johnson herself is a Special Education graduate of Virginia State University. “I got a very low-paying Special Education job right out of school,” she recalls, “then I went into the military as an officer,” following a rigorous 90-day officer training school. She was stationed at Travis Air Force Base in California and was in and near San Francisco during the first years of the AIDS epidemic.

“It was just after the bathhouses had just closed,” she recalls. “I saw Sister Boom Boom and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” iconic gay figures of the era. “I remember the history of AIDS,” she says.

The service, Johnson recalls, “was very, very rough for me.” An on-base speeding ticket led to a power-play situation with a sergeant who sexually assaulted her after she (“I was very naïve,” she says) agreed to meet him after hours to resolve the ticket.

The trauma resultant from this assault turned Johnson into a “workaholic,” gaining a mental health screener designation at The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and working as a New Jersey State Screener. Her time at various psychiatric crisis centers located in emergency rooms involved evaluating mentally ill people for admission to psych wards or other treatment options.

But her educational journey continued after a state representative said to her, “The fact that you don’t have your MSW,” or master’s degree in social work, “is unconscionable.”

This bold statement “stuck in my mind,” Johnson recalls, and inspired her to attend a Saturday MSW program at Fordham University from 1997-2001. “It turned out to be a magnificent academic experience,” she says, and this led to work as an emergency room psychiatric clinician where she evaluated patients for level of care, an occupation she continued for 20 years. It also led to further work with the homeless and mentally ill.

In this role, she learned the ins and outs of social services agencies in Burlington County and was able to get her “folks” food, emergency housing and other services. Continuing, she worked with three mental health centers in Burlington County. Johnson, in a nutshell, has been of service.

During her career, she says she developed a particular fondness for working with “co-occurring disorder,” which is a newer term for people experiencing “MICA — mentally ill, chemically addicted — or dual diagnosis.”

She was one of the first workers on Catholic Charity’s PACT team (Program of Assertive Community Treatment), which she describes as a “hospital without walls,” which deals with people with an “extremely high recidivism rate” who have been going in and out of the hospital because they were not able to connect with community mental health services. The PACT team consists of a psychiatrist, RN, vocational specialist, substance abuse specialist and peer specialist, all working together to support individuals in need of acute care.

Johnson is particularly concerned with the stigma that attends relapse on alcohol or other drugs. “If you relapse on cancer, you’re given compassion and care,” she notes. But people who arrive at emergency rooms multiple times intoxicated often find a far different greeting. She describes the treatment of people addicted to alcohol and other drugs in the US as “deplorable.”

She’s a strong advocate for “talk therapy” as a “powerful tool for wellness” for people learning to process stressors without self-medicating with chemicals. She paraphrases one of her mentors, saying, “Self-care is not self-indulgence — self-care is self-preservation, which is an act of political warfare.”

She typifies the current political climate as “dangerous” and “frightening,” one in which VA benefits and social security are threatened.

“My VA benefits and my social security benefits are my foundation. It’s important for us to keep that oxygen mask on ourselves and maintain good physical health, good mental health, good spiritual health, and that is an act of political warfare — that’s how you can fight to stay alive because things will get better. My grandmother would say everything happens for the best, so I was disciplined at a young age to look at obstacles as a blessing,” Johnson says.

In more recent years, Johnson has worked as a consultant for SAGE, an organization that advocates and provides services for LGBTQ+ seniors. Her groups often focus on anger management and depression.

“Depression is about feeling hopeless, helpless, worthless and powerless,” she says, and combating this group of negative feelings and states can be challenging. “I enjoy my work with SAGE — it has been wonderful to be able to provide education,” she says.

She says SAGE’s work in providing socialization opportunities for LGBTQ+ seniors is also important to her: “Having a community where you can have fun and go to parties and go to plays — it is phenomenal! And it also provides a community where you can provide wisdom and education to LGBTQIA+ youth.”

After her lifetime of service, ongoing, Johnson concludes: “Life is precious!”

“Life is precious: It’s a damn lie that you have enough time — no you don’t! If you’re going to write the book, write the book, if you’re going to travel, travel, if you’re going to go back to school, go back to school! Tell that person you love them!

“Get it done!”