Stuart Johnson

Stuart Johnson passed away of Covid complications peacefully on the 21st of March at the age of 65, surrounded by his 3 children and daughter-in-law.

He was a dedicated father, husband and grandfather to his family. Stuart devoted the last years of his time on earth caring for his wife, Regina (who is in extremely late stages of dementia) and trying to fulfil his WRIST mission given by True Father.

We feel embraced that he managed to spend 9 months in a 3-generation household and meet his first grandchild (Rei). His personality was that of never faltering and focusing 100% on what he believed needed to be completed. He was a perfectionist that adapted to every task presented to him and as a result has always been prepared to leave this earth at a moment's notice. In his exact words, written in a letter 8 years ago: "I followed my father to the spirit world, like father like Son, I could do no other if required."

We earnestly pray for his smooth transition into the spirit world and thank everybody for their support for him.

Stuart Knighton Johnson was born in Sheffield in May 1955, ten years after the war's end, into a household where luxuries were scarce but love was not. He grew up alongside an older brother he adored, playing football in the local park and fishing with friends. School was a rocky start until a perceptive teacher noticed him squinting and suggested a trip to the optician; with glasses, the world sharpened, and so did his ambition. He fell in love with science and would carry that fascination through every chapter of his life, eventually earning a master's at Sheffield University and a doctorate, and beginning his career as a technician in the Hallamshire Hospital clinical chemistry labs.

It was at those labs in 1978 that Stuart met John Galloway, a fellow young scientist who would become a lifelong friend. The two stood apart from colleagues who frequented pubs; Stuart preferred a day outdoors, where, as John put it, "a fine day in nature was worth a million pounds." They spent long hours at the Coldhindley reservoir fishing for tench, and Stuart, patient and stubborn, usually landed the biggest catch. Years earlier, on a cold winter night at a bus stop after badminton, Stuart had offered a lift to a young man named Khalid, beginning a near-fifty-year friendship. The two would later win the men's doubles at the Sheffield District Badminton Championships, and Stuart brought Khalid home to meet his parents when Khalid's own family was thousands of miles away.

Stuart's spiritual searching led him, after seven years as an associate member, to commit fully to the Unification movement. He moved to America to join Dr. C.S. Park's Research Institute for Science and Technology. In January 1989 he attended a matching workshop hoping, by his own admission, for a Japanese wife. Brazilian brothers pressed him on the merits of a Brazilian bride, and in the end heaven gave him both: Regina Mizue Ogasawara, a Japanese-Brazilian sister born in 1953 to a poor migrant farming family in São Paulo. They wrote letters and traded cassette tapes across the continent before Regina joined him in New York.

Three children followed — Sojin in 1990, Yesung in 1991, and Maomi in 1995, the last born after the family settled in Sheffield. Stuart worked tirelessly; Regina, the family's quiet backbone, kept the home, took night shifts at a supermarket, and later worked as a carer. They gardened together at every house they lived in, harvesting runner beans, marrows and tomatoes that Regina pressed on the neighbours.

Summers belonged to Filey Beach, where Stuart resurrected the holidays of his own childhood through elaborate sandcastle competitions. The children would labour all day building a fort, and if it survived the tide, an ice cream was the prize — though they only learned as adults that Stuart had been quietly fudging the clock so they always won. When his mother needed care, Regina, despite her own full days, carried home her mother-in-law's laundry every week, mending and washing it herself.

As dementia closed in on Regina, Stuart took early retirement to become her full-time carer, planning picnics at Graves Park, walks in the Peak District, gentle days designed entirely around her. Friends remembered Regina's meticulously kept hands and her unwavering smile, and Stuart's quiet South Yorkshire warmth — and a more playful streak, like his secret campaign to coach baby granddaughter Rae into saying "Grandad" before "Daddy." When John Galloway moved house twenty-two years ago, Stuart gifted him a cutting from his father's gooseberry and redcurrant bushes; they still bear fruit today. Stuart and Regina passed within weeks of each other in the spring of 2021, laid side by side at Stanton Fitzwarren — a love story, as the officiant said, in which one could not bear to leave the other behind.