Lebanon
Johnstone, a former bank president who bought the Lebanon-based Central Supply plumbing and heating company in 1991, did so not only through fair business dealings and savvy hiring practices, but with a mostly hidden passion for service that was revealed only upon his death in April at 79.
“We knew what he was involved in, but the extent and the impact he had is really staggering,” said his son, Bruce W. Johnstone, now the Lebanon branch manager of Plumbers’ Supply Co., a larger company that bought Central Supply in 2010.
Bruce Johnstone recalls performing some small type of good deed as a teenager. Perhaps he’d given someone a dollar or picked up litter, he can’t quite remember. Proud of himself, he mentioned this to his father, who congratulated him but added a meaningful caveat.
“He said that if you brag about something like this, it’s worth less,” the son recalled. “And the cool thing is, he took his own advice.”
Johnstone was from Grafton, Mass., just east of Worcester, and was the third of four boys born to Robert Whyte Johnstone and Grace Irene (Bleakney) Johnstone.
Bedridden for roughly a year with kidney problems, the youngster recovered well enough to be a varsity skier at Middlebury College, which he attended after graduating from the private Northfield Mount Hermon school in northwest Massachusetts.
Although an English major, Johnstone found his passion in banking, and he and his wife, Sondra, whom he’d met at Middlebury, moved to Albany, N.Y., and the Rochester, N.Y., area before settling in Bedford, N.H. Their children each graduated from Manchester West High, the boys attending their parents’ college alma mater and their daughter, Katie, going to St. Lawrence.
Johnstone worked in Nashua as the president and chief operating office of Indian Head Bank, which was the largest in New Hampshire. However, the institution was bought by a bigger bank in the late 1980s and Johnstone was told his services were no longer needed. He called to tell the news to his second son, Rob, who was then a newspaper reporter in Springfield, Vt.
“For me, my dad was Superman,” recalled Rob Johnstone, a Windsor High English teacher who recently ended a 25-year run as coach of the Lebanon High boys soccer program and who writes occasionally for the Valley News. “In his voice, he sounded like he had let us down in some way, although that couldn’t have been further from the truth.”
The elder Johnstone searched for another banking job, but those to be had would have required moves to a metropolitan area. He turned his attention instead to his longtime dream of buying his own business, and through a broker and prior banking connections, decided upon Central Supply. Johnstone was a fairly handy guy around the house, but had no knowledge of commercial plumbing, heating or appliances. More importantly, however, he had a gift for personal connections and finance and evaluating an acquaintance’s character.
Steve Russell, Rob Johnstone’s Middlebury College roommate and soccer teammate, got to know his friend’s family through visits to their summer home on Newfound Lake. The young man didn’t realize the impression he’d made until Johnstone invited him into Indian Head’s credit training program, despite what Russell described as a mediocre academic record.
Russell’s future wife, Michelle Moncayo, worked as an Indian Head teller. The Ecuadorian had immigrated to the U.S. at 20 and had no credit history, so she was riding the bus to and from her job. When she applied for a car loan, it was rejected, but Johnstone reversed the ruling, leading to a successful loan and repayment.
“He made life-altering decisions for both of us,” said Russell, now working in derivatives sales at a Los Angeles-area bank.
Johnstone spent an enormous part of his life side-by-side with his wife, a schoolteacher. Their son Bruce said the couple probably spent the night apart fewer than half a dozen times during their 44-year marriage. Rob Johnstone described his parents “as one” and said his appreciation for their bond has grown the longer he looks back upon it.
Much like the Johnstones’ marriage, Central Supply thrived for many years and the couple built a house in Meriden in 1992. Curt Shepard, a Lyme resident who is in his fourth decade as a plumbing and heating contractor, was one of the newly managed store’s first customers. He said Johnstone had a way of making almost anyone feel like he was their best friend.
“They were competing with giant stores that can drop their prices and people are going to go to them unless you build some sort of loyalty and bond,” Shepard said. “It was partly Bruce’s personality that made his store successful.”
Sondra Johnstone, affectionately known as “Bumpy” to her grandchildren, died of pancreatic cancer in 2007 and her husband endured a kidney transplant from Rob not long after. The global economic slowdown that followed was not kind to the family business, where Bruce W. was in management and Rob worked in appliances.
“The recession wasn’t a knockout blow, but a stunning one,” Rob Johnstone said. “Eventually, my dad wanted to sell the company and maybe even needed to sell it, but he was not going to sell it to someone who was going to come in and fire 30 people. That was as much a necessity to him as getting out.”
The choice was Plumbers’ Supply Co., a larger, Massachusetts-based business that kept most Central Supply employees and for which Bruce W. continues to work as the Lebanon branch manager. That left his father with what many would assume to be leisure time, but the older man didn’t treat it that way.
“He had this understanding that Bumpy would have not wanted him to stop interacting with the community as much as he did,” said Emily Acker, one of the couple’s eight grandchildren, a Hanover High and Tulane University graduate who is beginning a health care career in Denver this summer. “She would have been disappointed in him and he definitely didn’t want that.”
First and foremost, Johnstone became a deeply involved grandparent, available to spend time with his grandchildren and ferry them to and from numerous commitments. He attended virtually every one of their theatric, musical and sports performances and fretted when forced to choose between them.
When two of his grandsons, Lebanon High’s Owen Johnstone and Hanover’s Jake Acker, faced off on the soccer pitch, their grandfather made sure to sit exactly at midfield so as to show no favoritism. Although not a particularly passionate sports fan, he spent hours at soccer, hockey, tennis, nordic skiing and lacrosse venues throughout Vermont and New Hampshire. Rob Johnstone remembers that as everyone else drifted away from his final game coaching Lebanon last fall, a double-overtime upset loss in the playoffs, his father remained nearby in the chill as a comforting presence.
Johnstone’s low-key, affable personality also served him well as he ramped up his volunteerism. He served on the board of directors for Lebanon’s Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital, the New England Healing Sports Association and the Mayhew camp program for at-risk boys in Bristol, N.H., not far from the summer home he built in the early 1980s.
Johnstone took more of a hands-on approach when he began spending daily time at the Upper Valley Haven, the White River Junction nonprofit that assists those struggling with poverty. That work was something of an extension of the generosity and emotional care that he and Sondra Johnstone had discreetly shown in decades past, when they took several of her students into their home for extended periods of time.
Johnstone volunteered primarily in the Haven’s food pantry. His work ranged from checking cans for expiration dates and produce for rot to guiding clients through the shelves and serving as a team leader overseeing operations on any given morning or afternoon. His presence was most deeply felt, however, when he was sitting in the Haven’s cafe, often with a cup of coffee.
“He would visit with people having a difficult day,” remembered Sara Kobylenski, the organization’s executive director. “He would be totally relaxed and end up finding the most vulnerable person in the room and sitting with them. He had such a warm, kind ear and his authenticity was just so strong.”
Johnstone’s devotion once drew unintentional laughs while he was rounding up plastic grocery bags to be reused at the Haven. A local septic service company received news that a man had been seen hanging nearly upside down in one of its dumpsters at Lebanon’s Woodlands apartment complex. When the mystery was unraveled and Johnstone, who moved to that retirement community in 2015, was identified as the diver, it led to the company offering free service to the Haven, an arrangement that stands to this day.
To no one’s surprise, Johnstone became part of The Woodlands’ residential governing board. There, as always, he didn’t say much, but his words carried considerable weight when uttered. Johnstone served on the Mayhew program’s board from 1989-95 and was a driving force in organizing fundraisers and drawing workers and donors to them for years after.
“He wouldn’t stand on the sidelines and be a puppet master,” said Jim Nute, who oversees an eight-year program that provides summer camp and year-round mentoring for boys starting at ages 10 and 11. “He was very careful about the organizations he got involved with, but boy, if he believed in you, he put the full force of his personality behind you.”
Kobylenski noted that just because Johnstone was kind didn’t mean he was a pushover. Bruce W. Johnstone remembered that his father had strong, intelligent opinions, although he often kept them to himself or introduced them through humor.
“If you were going to bring up a topic with him, you’d better have your arguments ready and well thought out,” he son said. “If he didn’t think something was right, he could give you a really good reason why it wasn’t the best way to go.”
Johnstone barely spoke of the slew of health problems that converged earlier this year and ended his life. He kept his burdens and gifts of time and effort to himself.
“He could have played golf for the rest of his life,” Russell said. “There are people who do things because it’s a good thing to do, but they also like to see their name on the side of a building. Mr. J., he just did it because it was the right thing.”
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com or 603-727-3227.