Noreen Lois Johnson

Noreen (Lois) Robbins Johnson died quietly at home in Alexandria, December 2, 2025. She was 94. A Memorial Service will be held at 11:00 AM on Wednesday, January 7th, 2026, at Anderson Funeral Home with visitation one hour prior to the service.

Noreen was born August 15, 1931, to a music-, book- and fun-loving family in St. Cloud. Her father, Claude, was an engineer on the Great Northern Railroad. Her mother, Eleanor, was a popular hostess in St. Cloud, and the local paper carried frequent articles about gatherings at their home. Noreen’s sister, Rae, sang and acted in local theatre productions. Memories and photographs of Noreen’s growing up included riding with her father in the train engine (and waving like the Queen), walking to the neighborhood ice cream parlor with her dad for a pint or two, summers at the lake, and roller skating around her neighborhood with her dog, Skippy.

Noreen graduated from St. Cloud Tech High School in 1949, and attended St. Cloud Teachers College from 1949-53, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She accepted a position at Staples High School the following year, teaching English, Spanish, French and serving as the yearbook advisor.

In 1955, a handsome, brooding new teacher arrived on the scene, complete with a complicated past, a horse, and on crutches from a riding accident. Since she was dating the basketball coach at the time, Noreen didn’t pay much attention to this Dwain Johnson fellow until a chance meeting of the three teachers resulted in an invitation to ride the horse. At the first leap, Noreen lost her stirrups. At the second, she was clutching the horse around the neck. The ride ended when the horse stopped suddenly and she ignominiously landed headfirst in a snowbank. The basketball coach laughed. The new speech and English teacher fished her out of the snowbank. And a romance was born that lasted until his death in May of 2011.

Dwain and Noreen married July 18, 1956. They left Staples for Rochester later that year, where unfortunately, teachers married to one another could not both teach in the district. Their daughter Dana was born in 1958, and died after three days. Lisa was born in 1961 and Robin in 1965.

Noreen often reflected that her favorite time in her life was the time she spent at home, raising her daughters and taking care of her family. A confirmed “Shy Person,” she was most comfortable looking after the people she loved best, and teaching her two children to love books, music, and movies, along with language, words, and laughter. In the time after breakfast and teeth-brushing and before the school bus came, she read to her daughters. She played the piano and sang, frequently, in the evenings after the dishes were done. She sewed her daughters’ school clothes, and they joined her in her sewing room on weekends, watching old movies on the black-and-white set with the rabbit ears. A regular attendee at Sunday movie matinees with her older sister when she was a kid, she frequently took - or sent - her girls to the movies on the weekend. And more than once she awakened an oversleeping teenager by blasting the mad scene from the opera “La Navarraise” at top volume.

While in Rochester, Noreen worked as a medical editor for both the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology, and the Mayo Clinic in Nuclear Medicine. She spent over twenty years supporting her husband while he was gone evenings directing high school theater productions. Always dressed in an understated but elegant fashion, smiling and soft-spoken, “Mrs. J” never missed an opening night.

When Dwain retired in 1984, the Johnsons settled on a lake near Menagha so he could live his dream of full-time life on the lake. They settled in Alexandria in 1990, where Noreen bloomed, particularly eager to share her love of language and reading with the Literacy Guild. In 1995, she was given an award for over 1,000 hours of service by the Minnesota Literacy Council. In 1996, and was honored by the Douglas County Committee on Aging with the Older American Hall of Fame Certificate of Recognition for her work with the Alexandria Literacy Project. And in 1999, she was honored by the Minnesota Literacy Council again with a gold award, “in recognition of outstanding and innovative volunteer service.”

A master at entertaining herself, Noreen kept her life rich after Dwain’s death with reading books, newspapers and magazines, watching the news, binging on old movies, listening to classical music on the radio and her own exhaustive collection of CDs, and, of course, she never missed the Metropolitan Opera broadcast Saturday afternoons. She continued knitting, crocheting, embroidery and other handwork, and enjoyed visits and shopping trips with her daughters. Even when her body started giving her problems, though, she was still doing her crosswords in ink and reading her Strib daily, her Echo Press the minute it was delivered, and, of course, devouring her beloved books right until the end.

Noreen will be remembered through the extensive collections of books, music, and movies of both her daughters. She will live on through her daughter who inherited her love of music, reading and history and her curiosity about the world around her, through the daughter who knits and does handwork and loves her dogs, and through the granddaughter who drinks tea, the occasional glass of wine, and is learning to love crossword puzzles and classical music.

Noreen was preceded in death by her parents, Claude and Eleanor Robbins; her sister, Rae Peterson; her brother Glaydon Robbins and his wife, Lois; her husband, Dwain; an infant daughter, Dana; and her dogs Snibbor, Hero, Winston, and Oscar.

She is survived by her two daughters, Lisa Johnson of Barrett and Robin Johnson of St. Paul; her grandchild Nolan Bartel of Minneapolis; stepsons Mike Johnson of Shoreview and Paul Johnson (Dian) of Blaine; her niece Mary (Bill) Tradewell of Hopkins and her nephew Jay (Betty) Johnson of Elbow Lake; and her former caregiver and dear friend, Carissa Becker of Osakis.