Mary Ann Johnson passed away in Brooklyn, New York, on May 2, 2025. Mary Ann was born in Bancroft, Nebraska, on August 15, 1928. She is survived by her son, Bill, her daughter-in-law, Susan, and her grandson, Joel. Her husband, Chuck, predeceased her. Services are pending through Lanza Funeral Home in New York.
Over the course of almost five decades, Mary Ann planted roses, flowers and trees on an acreage along Highway 133 outside of Blair, Nebraska. She took a brome grass pasture of seven acres and transformed it into a forest for butterflies, bees and birds. She planted more than 600 rose bushes.
On any given day, you could see a brown creeper crawling up a branch not far from a yellow-headed blackbird glowing up above a row of trees. Mary Ann understood that planting trees wasn't about this generation, but about every generation that comes after, that we all walk taller when we walk amongst trees.
Nevertheless, she worried about a world divided between people that plant trees and those that cut them down.
Mary Ann was active in the Blair and Omaha Rose Societies as well as several environmental groups, including the Omaha chapters of the Sierra Club and Audubon Society, and also the Nebraska Wildlife Federation.
Mary Ann had a song, she loved music. And back in the day she played a mean guitar. She loved the music of Johnny Cash and other country and bluegrass musicians of the day. She also loved the guitar and accordion work of Los Lobos, saying that it reminded her of the music played by some of the farm laborers that would work the fields when she was young.
There's part of a Los Lobos song that represents the unrecognized work and beauty of many of us that hopefully leads to a better place.
“We write a song that no one sings on a cold black stone where a lasting peace will finally bring.”
Mary Ann would like donations made on her behalf to the Nebraska Wildlife Federation. Otherwise, she would like you to plant a tree or two or three for her. In fact, she would love that.
