Warren Johnston, 77, newsman started Crawfish Festival
January 4, 2024
Warren Johnston, a veteran newsman who got his start in Georgetown and Pawleys Island before tours of duty in six cities over four decades, died Dec. 9 at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H. He was 77. The cause was complications of cardiac surgery.
In a long and prolific career, Mr. Johnston had stints as a bureau chief at The Tampa Tribune, as an editor at the Las Vegas Sun and as editor, reporter and columnist at the Valley News in New Hampshire. Low key and gentle, but with high standards, he was an unflappable journalist, described by his co-worker, Mark Davis as a “true Southern gentleman” who epitomized the very best traits of the expression – soft spoken and slow to anger. The long-time food writer and restaurant critic at The Tampa Tribune, Mary Scourtes, remembers him as an “authoritative editor who knew how to weigh a situation critically, while helping a reporter craft a story in the best possible light.”
He was born June 23, 1946, in Atlanta, the youngest of four sons of Richard B. and Jane Dillon Johnston. He attended North Fulton High School where he was twice elected class president, served on the student council and, like his brothers, played football and ran track. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Georgia in 1969. After a start in commercial real estate in Atlanta, he went on to open a restaurant with Louis Osteen, a longtime friend who later became a James Beard recognized chef. Unfulfilled by these early work experiences, Mr. Johnston spent a year in the graduate journalism program at the University of Georgia. There he met Sandy Gaines, a beautiful art student who he married on July 29, 1978. Friends recall that from then on, the couple were regarded as one word, “warrenandsandy” – “you never thought of them separately.”
In the late 1970s, Mr. Johnston worked as a reporter at The Georgetown Times and then at the Pawleys Island Perspective, a monthly magazine. He and Mr. Osteen, who died in 2019, came up with the idea of starting the S.C. Crawfish Festival at Pawleys Island as a way to promote aquaculture in the former ricefields.
Mr. Johnston was perhaps best known as a mentor and leader who helped shape the careers of numerous young journalists, encouraging them to approach their stories from a personal perspective, and bring humanity to bear in the telling. He was a fearless boss, uncompromising in his commitment to his team and extremely generous to those people he loved. Famous for defending his reporters from imperious editors, he advised them not to be afraid, to stand their ground and cover the story. He made work fun, appreciated the good times, and his staff loved him in return. In doing so, he fostered teams so devoted to him that even 30 years later, remembrances evoked comments like that of Tampa’s Susan Snyder. “We trusted him. I would have walked in front of a bus if he asked me to.” Fellow reporter Geoff Mohan, who went on to a long career at the LA Times, recalled that, “He encouraged me to do new things, to approach a story differently.” Dan Turner, who later served as communications director for Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, said, “He made us better than we were, better than we could have been without him and dammit, we had a helluva time.”
In every place he lived, Mr. Johnston left behind a trail of good will and affection, of friends enriched by his compassion, his kindnesses and good cooking, of rescued pets and rehabilitated homes. In his legacy, are communities improved through his activism – the rice fields rejuvenated as a result of the Pawleys Island Crawfish festival that he founded with Osteen, producing sustenance and jobs for the community for more than a decade. In Raeford, N.C., and Natchez, Miss., the economic impact that resulted from his founding of the Turkey Festival and the Balloon Festival remains today. Following retirement from his last job at the Valley News and while living in Vermont’s Upper Valley, he was involved with the Upper Valley Trails and importantly worked with the Alliance for Vermont Communities, responsible for stopping the New Vistas project, a planned community that had it succeeded would have desecrated that pristine community.
Emmy Award winning journalist and Las Vegas colleague Mark Shaffer echoes the sentiments of many: “I learned more about life, journalism, food, wine, and patience from Warren in my short time in Vegas than in all the years prior. His loss is immense.”
In addition to his wife of 45 years, Sandy Gaines Johnston of South Royalton, Vt., his is survived by his brothers, Dr. Richard B. Johnston Jr. of Denver and Charles L. Johnston of Atlanta.
His other brother, W. Dillon Johnston, died before him.
Memorials may be made to The Vermont Food Bank at vtfoodbank.org.
