Note: This message was originally sent on October 23, 2019
This story is very easy to describe… WOW:
Some of life’s greatest accomplishments can be traced back to the smallest of beginnings. Just ask Shirley Johnson, a 2005 Nobel Peace Prize recipient and one of the first inspectors ever allowed inside of Iraq (pictured below).
The oldest of seven children, Shirley was raised on a cattle ranch that straddled the Continental Divide in western Montana, where the sky seemed to stretch as far as a young girl’s imagination. She learned of the world’s possibilities within the confines of a one-room grade school. And after four years at an all-girls Catholic school in Butte, she entered what was then a nearly exclusive all-male field at Gonzaga University: chemistry.
“Mom kept saying, ‘Shirley you don’t have to be a chemistry major,’ but I didn’t know what else I would do,” she said. “It was something I knew I was meant to be since I was three years old. It truly was the right choice.”
But the right choice didn’t imply an easy one. “School was hard, but it was Gonzaga’s personal attention that made all the difference,” she said. “Dennis Kelsh, who at the time was dean of the chemistry department, encouraged me to stay the course and has followed my career ever since. Quite frankly, Gonzaga taught me how to think.”
And that was something that Shirley always wanted to repay. “Gonzaga has been a beneficiary in my will for the last 28 years,” she said. “Growing up, my mother was strong on education. She is my greatest hero and mentor; she and Gonzaga were what gave me my life and everything I have.”
In addition to over 40 years of supporting several scholarship funds at GU, a portion of her estate will be used for the benefit of Gonzaga University’s chemistry department.
After 25 years of living and working in Vienna, Austria, as a safeguards inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency, Shirley returned to her family’s homestead atop the Continental Divide. “Montana has always been my home, but Gonzaga’s got my heart,” she said.