Larry Johnson

Larry Johnson

Then Now

Home: 924 Hidden Lake Road
Naperville, Illinois 60565

Phone: (630) 416-3453

Family:

Married Anne Swaim (DLC class of 1968) in June 1971 in the castle (historic half-scale replica of the Berkeley in Engand) in her hometown of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.

Two sons:

Matt, born in 1980, who married Molly Young in 2004. Matt and Molly were both in the Marching Illini and graduated from the University of Illinois in 2002. Matt now teaches at Lincoln Way East High School in the Chicago area and got his Master's degree in 2007. Molly received her Master's from Vanderbilt and is a speech pathologist in the same school district as Matt. I think she likes the idea of having summers off.

Ben, born in 1982, is a software engineer living in Denver; he speaks many languages that we do not understand -- Java, HTML, Cold Fusion, Flash, etc. He took a little time off and traveled to Ireland, from there to the Canary Islands, back to Ireland, and then to Guatemala. He has been pretty independent since he was about eight.

Education:

1966   David Lipscomb College, B.A. economics
1973   Middle Tennessee State University, M.A. economics
1990   University of Illinois at Chicago, Ph.D. public policy analysis
           Why so long? I'm a slow learner.

Military:

1966 - 1970 U.S. Air Force, captain
There now, that's why you felt safer back then.

Short (thankfully) Bio:

1971 - 1973   Computer programmer at Genesco while going to MTSU at night. Pretty boring job, but it paid the bills.

1973 - 1979   Transportation planner at TDOT. Conducted the environmental impact analysis for I-440. It was a great job;
                     I was the "#%$@" engineer to the community and the "#%$@" environmentalist to the engineers, but it won
                     recognition for its design, and seems to have worked out well.

1979 - now    On the research staff at Argonne National Laboratory. Currently, head of the transportation technology r&d
                     program, which means research in engines, vehicle systems, fuel cells, batteries, tribology, high
                     performance computing, recycling, and use of the advanced photon source. All the things, you would
                     expect from an economist. Great job: I work with a lot of people smarter than me.

Little Known Facts:

•   Was an extra in the 1996 movie "Chain Reaction" with Keanu Reeves and Morgan Freeman. Opened a scene for
    Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz in a Chicago bar (which wound up on the cutting room floor, undoubtedly because
    Keanu could not get it right) and was a window shopper in the chase scene on Michigan Avenue which followed.
    Look closely, and fast.

•    Biked across Illinois (300 miles in 4 days) with my son, Ben, when he was 14 and again a year later, before he got a
    driver's license and never rode his bike again.

•    Have a patent for null-flux suspension, guidance, and propulsion for magnetic levitation (maglev) systems.
    Probably the only economist with a maglev patent.

•    With absolutely no political connections, my wife and I attended two receptions at the Vice President's Residence in
    DC. A pet project of Al Gore's was a research program to triple the fuel economy of passenger cars. So I was among
    some of the researchers in the auto industry and national labs that were invited to meet Al and Tipper (naturally we
    are on a first name basis).

I Stay Home to Watch What TV Show:

I don't stay home to watch TV, but if I did it would only be to watch shows that are informative or have socially redeeming values, such as "The Sopranos" or "Desperate Housewives."

Hobbies I Started But Never Became Good At:

Mountain Bike Racing -- one time in the seniors' category at the Traverse City (Michigan) winter race aptly named The Iceman Cometh Challenge; Deep Sea Fishing -- once off the coast of Miami (caught a six foot swordfish after a 45 minute tug of war); Cooking Camouflage Pancakes -- green and brown splotched pancakes only appeal to six-year old boys at a G.I. Joe themed birthday party, and even then some of them balked; Home Brewing Beer -- it's so much cheaper and quicker to buy it at the store, plus the house doesn't smell as bad; Trying to Learn Chinese (at my age I should give up, but I have been to China ten times in the last five years, so it seems like a useful, if frustrating, endeavor).

This year Anne decided she wanted to climb Mt. Washington (home to some of the country's worst weather and highest winds) in New Hampshire sometime before she turns 70. It is 6,288 feet and the highest point east of the Mississippi. So we have started training. We climbed Charles Mound, the highest peak (okay, at 1,235 feet it is a mound) in Illinois in 2006, followed within a few months by Harney Peak (7,242 feet) the highest peak in South Dakota and the highest point east of the Rockies, but weather was no problem. And since we were in the neighborhood, White Butte (3,507 feet) the highest point in North Dakota, while on a vacation to the Black Hills.

Books I'd Recommend:

I'm partial to histories and biographies. So, David McCullough (Truman; The Johnstown Flood; The Great Bridge; The Path Between the Seas; Mornings on Horseback; Brave Companions: John Adams, and most recently 1776) is one of my favorite authors. Other recommendations include: anything by Michael Crichton (just read "Next" over the holidays); Jerzy Kosinski's "The Painted Bird" (a classic); and "The Professor and the Madman" by Simon Winchester (it's the story behind the Oxford English Dictionary, but not at all as boring as that sounds). Finally got around to reading "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" by Jack Weatherford. Excellent book.

My Tombstone Should Say:

"He's joking. Isn't he?"

Last Updated: January 2007