On May 31, Charles Johnson, who began his career in vegetable sales in New Mexico in 1956, died. He was 88.

Mr. Johnson was born in Phoenix Aug. 26, 1932, and followed his father, Ernest Johnson, into the produce business in the mid-1950s, and then watched his son, Charles Johnson Jr., take over the family business a generation later.  Charles Johnson Jr. told The Produce News that the third-generation shipper-distributor still operates almost the same as it has for the past seven decades, with lettuce and onions being its primary crops, though cabbage was added to the mix a quarter century ago.

“My grandfather, Ernie Johnson, was a railroad man in Phoenix when my father was born in 1932,” said Charley Jr.

It wasn’t until the early 1950s that one of the elder Johnson’s vegetable grower customers convinced him to come to Las Cruces and sell his lettuce and onion crops. In the meantime, his son was attending the University of Arizona. He graduated from college and joined the United States Air Force in the mid-1950s.

In 1956, Ernie, who wasn’t in great health, convinced his son to join him in the sales office of what had become his own company. Father and son founded Ernie Johnson & Son in 1956. “My dad got an early release from the Air Force and joined his grandfather. In those years, the business included melons, lettuce and onions.”

The pair represented a number of growers in Las Cruces, some of whom are still growing crops for the successor company today.

Ernie Johnson died in 1974 but he had long given up the reins to his son, who ran the company, worked with the growers and sold the crops.  By the time of his grandfather’s death, Charley Jr., who was born in Arizona in 1956, was headed to Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

“When I graduated in 1978, I was thinking about going to grad school but my dad made me offer to join the family business,” he said.

The younger Charley took that option and he and his father grew the business a bit until Charles Johnson retired in the late 1990s. By then, the company was representing growers in Colorado and central Arizona, along with their New Mexico core. They also brokered lettuce in the winter.

Not only did Charley Jr. follow in his father’s business footsteps but he also patterned his life in the same manner. “My dad never moved to Las Cruces full-time. My parents made the decision to raise us in Phoenix. In those days Las Cruces wasn’t much of a town. My mother stayed in Arizona, and my dad went to Las Cruces during the season.”

Charley Jr. has been doing the same thing for the past 45 years. He spends about half the time in Las Cruces and half the time in Arizona where there is a Charlie Johnson III, who is still too young to determine if he is going to carry on the legacy of the three Johnson generations before him.

“My dad always had two houses one in Phoenix and one in Las Cruces, and I have done the same thing,” he said.

Charley Jr. recalls that his father retired about the time he hit 65 in 1997, but like his father before him, he had turned over the management of the company, which was changed to the Charles Johnson Co. in 1984, to his son. “By the time I was 30 (1986) I was running the show,” he said. “My dad was happy to turn it over to me.”

In retirement, Mr. Johnson played golf and traveled.  “He enjoyed traveling. He took many, many trips during his retirement.” He also was a Thunderbird, which is an organization that runs the Phoenix Open and is involved in many charitable activities.

Mr. Johnson married Mary Joanne Wimberley in 1954. They had four children: Charles Jr., Amanda, Joanna and Diana, who died in 2019. Mary Jo died in 1986. In 1999, Mr. Johnson married Helene Barthelemy, who has been with him for the past 23 years.