Johnson, W. Jacqueline

Canandaigua, NY

Jacqueline Johnson, was born Wanda Jacqueline Godfrey in the Summer of 1937 in Rochester New York, to Charles and Wanda Godfrey. She died peacefully of cancer on Friday, March 13th at Light Hill hospice in Canandaigua, NY with loving family present in her room. Jacqueline had many roles and touched many people. Jacqueline was a student: She studied several disciplines throughout her life, never content to maintain, always growing, reaching inwards towards self, outwards to people and upwards to God. She graduated from John Marshall High School in Rochester, studied at SUNY Fredonia, Nazareth College, SUNY Brockport, and The IM School of Healing Arts in New York City, as well as countless workshops and seminars. She was a voracious reader of the heavy, and the deep as well as the light-hearted. Jacqueline touched young lives as a gifted teacher and administrator, with certification in five different disciplines: She taught at the Canandaigua Primary School, and at the Canandaigua YMCA Nursery School. She was a reading aide at the Canandaigua Junior Academy and a reading teacher at Border City, and Penn Yan. She taught adult high school classes at FLCC and the Ontario County Jail, and ended her career teaching English at Midlakes Highschool. She was a neighbor. She lived in Canandaigua, New York for 59 years and was involved with a number of professional and community organizations and many book groups: Canandaigua Daycare Center Board of Directors, Interrogation Club, the American Association of University Women, where she had state and country leadership roles. The Parent Advisory Council for Canandaigua Jr. Academy, NY State Reading Association, Association for Curriculum, Development, Kappa Delta Pi–an educators association, Lake Counties Counsel Reading Association, and the Sufi order of Rochester Jacqueline was a survivor. This was not her first round with Cancer. In 2012 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and fought back with extensive multi-pronged defenses and with the support of friends and family and the help of doctors, nurses, and technicians. She beat the disease a couple of years later and remained cancer-free until December of 2019. She wrote of her experiences in her book listed and linked below.

Jacqueline was a trusted friend, a spiritual healer and guide, a talented writer and published author (The Guest House). She was a warm and wise counselor. The parade of devoted friends and associates who visited and contacted her in the last months of her life, came from many different chapters and facets of her long and fruitful life. From life-long friends, to barista’s serving her coffee she knew how to make people feel listened to, respected, and special. She was a perpetual source of life, humor, light and color: Jacqueline’s way of speaking, her clothes and patterns and jewelry were all big and vibrant with color. These things were, besides her grandsons, her joy! In her last week of life she asked that her nails be painted all different colors. Her wish was carried out and noted by many with smiles and compliments. Last and certainly not least, Jacqueline was a wife, mother, aunt and grandmother. Books could be written on all the wonderful, progressive, and loving personal ways she executed these roles, but we already know them: Her husband David Johnson, sons Joel and Matthew, daughter Kelly and grandsons Andre and Enzo Johnson.

Please consult Jacqueline’s Caring Bridge page for a link to an upcoming online photo album and information about a memorial in her honor when such gatherings are again possible : https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/jacquelinejohnson1

To remember and honor Jacqueline, charitable contributions may be made in her honor to:  Light Hill hospice: https://lighthillhome.org/?page_id=103

Or

Wood Library. Donate books or funds: https://www.mygiving.net/donate/151