Emily Ruth (Miller) Johnson was born in New York City on September 20, 1955. The second of three children, her parents, Lois Edith (Reichhard) Miller and Ryland Duke Miller, lived and worked on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Emily graduated from Deerfield High School in Deerfield, Illinois in 1973 (where she was a pompom girl) and the University of Wisconsin at Menomonee in 1977 with a degree in Early Childhood Education. In 1982 she married Ralph Burton Johnson of Columbus, GA. Their children, Cassady Rebecca (Johnson) Einglett and Adam Bricen Johnson, were born in Columbus.

Ralph serv...