Remembering Bryce Johnson
The Honorable Bryce Alan Johnson
January 6, 1972 – December 2, 2024
Tift Judicial Circuit District Attorney Bryce Johnson was a loving husband and son, a very proud father, a dear friend, and a stalwart of the Republican Party in the 8th District. We have lost him, and the world is a dimmer place because of it.
A sudden passing is such a shock for those left behind. The reality of a world without Bryce is just starting to sink in, and it still has a tinge of the surreal. Surely this is a dream, and we’ll all wake up. In the coming days, the reality of it all will sink in more and more, not just for his friends, but for his wife Erika and “young Will Johnson” as Bryce so often called him.
My facebook feed has been packed with people who have shared memories about Bryce, and I have discovered that he and I had mutual friends all over the state. I don’t know why I’m surprised by that because Bryce never met a stranger, and he would talk to a fence post. He truly loved people, and people were naturally drawn to his generous and friendly nature. Whenever I saw Bryce, he was always smiling. He loved his friends, and he was always so happy to spend time with them. It showed all over his face.
People went to him for advice because he was full of common sense and wisdom, and he had the rare talent of being able to answer questions without making you feel dumb for asking. Bryce had the ability to tell the truth, in a gentle way if need be, and that’s what made him a mentor and a role model for so many people. He pushed those around him to do things they didn’t think they could do, and he would never let you sell yourself short. And, oh how he got excited when his friends made a run for public office! And he supported us all wholeheartedly. With a family and a huge judicial circuit, Bryce must have been busy all the time, but he never seemed rushed when talking to his friends. I called him with questions from time to time, and as I’ve discovered on facebook, everyone else did too. We liked to know what Bryce thought before we did something because we all knew he would stop us before we made fools of ourselves.
I met Bryce when I moved to Warner Robins and got involved in 8th District GOP politics. To watch him run a Republican district convention was a thing of beauty. His calmness, firmness, and good humor meant he was unflappable during meetings that were often contentious and passionate. He taught many of us what a well-run meeting looked like, although I have never been able to replicate it with any degree of success.
He not only had a shrewd legal and political mind, he was a master of political trivia. He was a walking encyclopedia of Georgia politics. Lots of political nerds can tell you about current races, but Bryce could describe, in great detail, races that occurred before he was born. He could remember those ordinarily forgotten candidates who didn’t win a primary and also those folks who thought about running but didn’t. And he usually knew all the speculation on why they didn’t get into the race. Bryce knew all the stories (and could spend hours telling them), and I could spend hours listening to him.
He loved knowledge. His head was packed with facts, both important and trivial, about politics, sports, and the world in general. During our last conversation over BBQ sandwiches at The Pit Stop in Tifton, we chatted about some property I inherited in Wilkes County, NC which I haven’t visited since I was a child. Bryce started asking questions about it. When I couldn’t answer to his satisfaction, he pulled out his phone and began looking things up just so he would know. By the way, Wilkes has a population of almost 66,000, its county seat is Wilkesboro, but its largest community is North Wilkesboro. I could have read these facts a thousand times and not remembered them, and I’m sure my mother or grandmother had told me all these things at some point, but it took Bryce Johnson to make this knowledge stick in my head all because he chuckled over the fact that the largest town wasn’t the county seat. Most people don’t even care about this, yet Bryce was fascinated, and that’s what made him special.
Bryce has gone on ahead of us to find out all about Heaven. He’ll be waiting for us there when our time comes, and he’ll be so happy to see us! And since he will have found out everything there is to know, he will talk our ears off telling us all about it.
