The story has it that, when two Aborigine strangers meet, they pause to talk about their extended families, down to great-great-greats, eighth cousins and quite a few times removed. Supposedly, if they don’t find some remote kinship, they must fight.

There was never a danger of fighting with Charles Johnson when we first met, but we did find some extremely unusual places common to our lives: Kentucky; a small now-defunct Christian college in Enid, Oklahoma; a village about three miles south of the equator on the Congo River in Africa; a Presbyterian college in St. Paul; a Quaker Meeting. I was in an extremely hard place in my personal life, with decades of dreams exploding in my face, and Charles Johnson reached out to me through these strange places. Like he reached out to so many.

Charles Johnson was a remarkable man who touched many people in many different ways. He taught at a residential secondary school on the banks of the Congo River. He taught on a Navajo reservation when he returned. He was a professor at Macalester College, teaching French from 1969 to 1988. While at Macalester, he worked with a French-speaking Hmong informant named Se Yang, producing bilingual primers and a full anthology of Hmong literature and culture.

Charles lived his life as a whole, bearing moral witness with joy and warmth. At Quaker meeting, he always wore a rainbow-colored nametag that read simply, “Ally.” Years ago, when concerned about his own complicity in owning the Mac/Groveland home which had been part of a giant land swindle from the Dakota people, he calculated his own personal profit in that theft and paid it to a Dakota fund to re-buy the land.

Twice I had occasion to worry about Charles.

When the United States government came after Charles and his wife Ava-Dale due to their refusal to pay war taxes, it looked for a while like they might lose their home. Thankfully, it didn’t happen. But neither of them seemed too concerned, somehow.

More recently, I learned that Charles and Ava-Dale had made a very large contribution to a cause we both supported, and I wasn’t really sure that they could afford it. I asked them both about it, and they had indeed borrowed the money in order to donate it. But they had first done the calculations on how much they would require for their daily needs and how they would repay the loan. Then they gave freely of something just a bit more than their last penny. And they gave joyfully.

As it turned out, Charles was completely correct not to be concerned. His legacy of love and justice was built on a foundation of humility, humor, song. He may never have a residence hall or bridge (or aircraft carrier) named after him, but he certainly left a legacy.

I missed the memorial service for Charles. That day I was up in Duluth campaigning for Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, a candidate he supported as well. I am not sure that Charles would have made the same decision. Charles was always a warmer person than I have been, understanding more fully that compassion comes from love. So he might have stayed and honored the greatness of a departed one. But he certainly would have understood my decision, and I believe he would have supported it completely.

Sometimes I imagine us to be in a circle, when death robs us of a key link. Charles will be missed very deeply. We can only hope that others will come to fill that chasm that his departure has left. (I feel quite certain that Charles at this moment would break out with a song from his youth in Tennessee. I wish I could hear it.)