Richard B. Johnson Award

Richard B. ("Dick") Johnson, Esq.
1914 -1977

Richard B. Johnson – the Forgotten Hero of the Causeway Charge
By Paul Woodadge ©2008

Richard Brigham ("Dick") Johnson was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1939 after graduating from Harvard Law School. He joined the Boston firm of Ropes & Gray that year, but his legal career was almost immediately interrupted by military service in World War II. Johnson commanded a platoon of infantrymen who crossed the English Channel by glider and landed in Normandy on D-Day. Shot through the ankles while leading his men across a heavily defended causeway, he earned a Bronze Star for his bravery.

On his return from the war, he began to specialize in real estate law at Ropes & Gray. He became an active member of REBA’s predecessor, the Massachusetts Conveyancers Association and was elected a member of The Abstract Club. For many years, he supervised the work of former Land Court Judge Marilyn M. Sullivan, who joined Ropes & Gray in 1951 in order to assist him with real estate law work.

Ropes & Gray made him a partner in 1960. Johnson was also active in town affairs in his hometown of Swampscott, Massachusetts and served as moderator for several years in the 1960s. He was a co-author of Town Meeting Time which became the bible for town meeting moderators. In 1967, together with Warren Carley, another partner at Ropes & Gray, he drafted the first statute in Massachusetts authorizing industrial development bonds which was designed to save the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy.

Johnson served as President of the Massachusetts Conveyancers Association, now known as REBA in 1971 and 1972 and his expertise in all aspects of real estate law was generally highly regarded throughout the legal community. He was also known as a man of great caring, kindness and wit and also a person who was not afraid to directly confront and remedy a problem with quick-thinking action. While leaving for lunch one day, Johnson came across two bank robbers attempting to escape from the lobby of the building which housed the State Street Bank. He was able to trap one robber in the revolving doors of the building and tackled the second would-be thief and held him until the police arrived.

In 1971 Johnson was diagnosed with cancer. He was in and out of the hospital and his law office over the next several years, continuing his endeavors with great courage. He died in 1977.

Recipients of the Richard B. Johnson Award