Camille Johnson, Kansas City educator who co-founded anti-violence initiative, dies at 45

Editor’s note: This feature is part of a weekly focus from The Star meant to highlight and remember the lives of Black Kansas Citians who have died.

The first time Camille Johnson met most of her Kansas City extended family, it was in the wake of tragedy.

Her cousin, Dejuan Whitmire, was shot to death in June 2001. Grief-stricken relatives from across the metro had convened inside of a home to mourn — including those she had never spoken to. Johnson grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, not far from family, but didn’t attend many major family events.

She moved to California after high school to pursue her dream of acting in the theater. She didn’t come into contact with the relatives she knew only in name until, at the age of 24, one of them was murdered.

When she walked through the door of her cousin’s home, everyone instantly recognized her, said ReKeysha Butler-Abdullah, another of Johnson’s cousins. Her voice was loud, like theirs, and she spoke with an uninhibited, brash confidence. She and Butler-Abdullah learned they were the same age, and had both recently given birth to children one month apart.

From that moment, the two were inseparable, best friends brought together through heartbreak. Butler-Abdullah had suffered a devastating loss only one month prior, when the father of her children, Lorenzo McClain, was fatally stabbed near 41st and Troost. Meeting Johnson pulled her out of despair.

About a decade later, Butler-Abdullah’s nephew, Alfonzo Blair, was shot and killed walking home from a gas station. They had enough, and vowed to do something about the violence.

The two cousins started an event to honor the scores of young Black men taken too soon and their mothers who bravely soldier on. They hoped, too, to educate the next generation on better alternatives.

Johnson took the lead in organizing what came to be known as Mothers Rock, a “mother and son” event with food, music and speeches from role models in the community. She made their vision a reality, Butler-Abdullah said.

“She was just so knowledgeable in so many areas,” she said during a recent phone interview. “Part of it was because of her background in theater, and she was so outgoing, and she knew so many people… She made it all come together.”

Johnson, whose efforts to curb violence in Kansas City was a small part of her life as an educator and mentor to young children, died on Feb. 18 following a months-long fight with bile duct cancer, family said. She was 45.

Johnson was a full-time para-educator with Olathe Northwest for more than a decade, assisting children with learning disabilities and behavioral problems with her trademark patience, grace and occasional, necessary discipline. For the past two years, family said, she was also the director of a Johnson County Parks & Recreation before-and-after-school program at an Fairview Elementary School.

Her daughter, Arian Moye, 23, isn’t quite sure how she did it all. Her mother would awake at 5 a.m., report to her before-school program by 7, arrive at the high school by 9 a.m. and finally, when the last bell rang around 3 p.m., head back to the after-school program. She worked 14-hour days.

When Johnson returned home at the end of it all, she only had funny or inspiring stories to share with her daughter, her son or her husband. Moye said she never once heard her complain.

“I think it gave her some sort of purpose, and it also gave those kids purpose,” Moye said from Las Vegas, where she attends the University of Nevada. “I can’t tell you how many times those kids went, ‘Miss Camille, Miss Camille, Miss Camille, look at this, look at this, look this!’ They were excited to see her. They loved her.”

Joy Boan, the school nurse at Fairview Elementary School, paid tribute to Johnson on the website for the Mrs. J.W. Jones Funeral Home, sharing a letter she sent to the YMCA of Greater Kansas City — which then ran the program — in 2018.

She described her in the letter as a “blessing” to the entire school community who had an optimistic outlook even when dealing with difficult children and — sometimes — adults.

“Camille seeks out opportunities to make the world a better place for all of us,” Boan wrote.

Johnson’s tireless work ethic and strong sense of direction were the result of her upbringing as an only child, with a fiercely independent mother, Mozella Mabon, who taught her how to fend for herself.

Johnson was born on Jan. 31, 1977, and raised by her single mother, who was in the Air Force Reserves and worked as a postal employee, according to Johnson’s husband, Paul Johnson.

Johnson developed a love of plays and musicals during her youth that never faded. She studied acting when she lived in California — her family can’t remember where — and though she never graduated, she dipped her toes into the world of theater. Among her stage roles: She was once one of the three doo-wop-singing urchins in a production of “Little Shop of Horrors.”

She moved back to Kansas City around 1999, earning a bachelor’s degree from Avila University and then a master’s from Mid-America Nazarene University. Along the way she met Paul Johnson and together they raised her two children from a previous marriage.

It took her some time to finally find her family, a group that was never far apart geographically but had historically been somewhat “divided,” Butler-Abdullah said. Some of them grew up not knowing each other. They didn’t know how to get in touch as adults.

When their family suffered the third homicide in their family in 2010, Butler-Abdullah was the one who suggested to Johnson the idea of forming a group, wanting to do something to lift the spirits of her desolate sister whose son was killed. Her response was to-the-point: “Let’s do it.”

“It was a mother-son banquet because at that time, and even today, there’s nothing really set aside for mothers and sons,” Butler-Abdullah said. “Our goal was to have that time for mothers and sons.”

They held the event twice, in 2012 and 2013, and then stopped. Butler-Abdullah got busy with nursing school, and her own family of six. Johnson’s two children were getting older and she wanted to give them all of her extra energy.

But she valued herself and her time, too, plotting the occasional getaway with a friend. During the last trip she ever took with Butler-Abdullah, before her cancer diagnosis, they attended a bachelorette party held over a weekend in Las Vegas. It wasn’t all smiles and loving sentiments, though.

As always, with their dueling strong personalities, they spent a decent chunk of time arguing like best friends do. They fought over a parking space at one point. The bickering eventually ended with Butler-Abdullah gambling by herself all afternoon — they made up by the time they saw Nelly and Kelly Rowland live in concert.

Johnson’s trips with her daughter were less fraught with tension, like when they went to New York City and scored last-minute tickets to a sold-out show of “Hamilton,” all because Johnson found out when to wait in front of the theater.

“She’s very talkative and likes meeting with people,” Moye said. “She found out that if you wait in this line you can get cheaper tickets — cancellation seats. So we got in line at 8 in the morning.”

Over the past year, it became harder for Johnson to do all the things she loved with her aggressive chemotherapy treatments. She stayed upbeat, though, and was even up to her usual antics at their family Christmas, Butler-Abdullah said. She protested during the prayer that it was time to eat already, and dug in before they could say “amen.”

But in the middle of January, she collapsed, complaining of a terrible headache. A doctor performed a spinal tap and determined the fluid had spread across her body, into her brain.

Her death, almost a month ago, was another tragic and untimely loss in their family, her life stolen not by violence, but disease.

Moye said it’s been hard to get sleep in Nevada, where she’s studying costume design because of her mother. Johnson was the one who introduced her to the theater, and supported her when she started sketching out costumes and sewing together fabrics in high school. She took her to shows at Starlight, in Chicago and New York.

She and the rest of her family have lost their ever-reliable “backbone,” the most important person in their lives, Moye said.

But if anyone showed them how to overcome the direst of circumstances, it was Johnson.

“My mother was a very strong woman,” Moye said. “You really can’t be that strong without having some difficulties in life.”

Johnson is survived by her husband, Paul Johnson; children, Arian Moye and Ishmael Moye; mother, Mozella Mabon; father, Duane Curtis Moore; as well as brothers, sisters, cousins and many other relatives.

Other remembrances

Burnis Holmes

Burnis Holmes, a Wyandotte County government employee whose guiding mission in life was to serve others, died Feb. 26 in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, according to an obituary shared by Thatcher Funeral Home. She was 97.

Born on Feb. 13, 1925 in Hayden, Oklahoma, Holmes was the youngest child in her family and the only daughter, the obituary said. She got her education in Oklahoma and later moved to Kansas City, Kansas.

She married Leon Holmes in September 1965 and they settled down. They never had children, but Holmes had no shortage of family and friends, whom she often cheerfully helped, the obituary said. She and her husband were members of the Eighth Street Baptist Church.

Burnis worked for the federal government and several other agencies, the obituary said. After she announced her retirement several years back, she eventually returned to work in the juvenile department of the Wyandotte County District Court. She later definitively retired.She was a longtime member of Club Chazzalite, a social and civic club for women in Kansas City.

If Burnis would’ve had a motto, the obituary said, it would’ve been, “If I can help somebody, then my living will not be in vain.”

She’s survived by her sisters-in-law, Mildred Brown and Hazel Holmes, as well as several nieces, nephews and friends.

Retha Holland

Retha Holland, the beloved matriarch of a family that spanned five generations who also became a beloved “church mother” at her son’s Kansas City parish, died March 3, family said. She was 90.

Holland — known as “Honey” to relatives — was born on July 3, 1931 in Ringgold, Louisiana and raised in the small town. She was the only daughter in her family, with three brothers.

She met her first husband and moved to California with him, where they had a child, according to her son, Bill Mitchell. They separated and she later re-married, settling down in Kansas City, Kansas and having seven more children.

She worked for 10 years as a maintenance employee at the Federal Building in downtown Kansas City.

As the church mother, Holland was a teacher to many, guiding them not with her words but her actions, Mitchell said.

“She was that example,” he said. “That quiet spirit that she had.”

She’s survived by her children, Bill Mitchell, Shirley Douglass, Kathy Mitchell, Jacqueline Davis, Lisa Pittman, Angela Warren and Clay Pittman; 19 grandchildren; 21 great-grandchildren; four great-great-grandchildren; and several nieces, nephews and other relatives.

Rena Taylor-Ramsey

Rena Taylor-Ramsey, a former certified nursing assistant and school bus driver who was known for her family barbecues and movie nights, died Feb. 19, according to a Watkins Heritage Chapel obituary. She was 48.

She was born on Feb. 8, 1974 in Kansas City, Missouri and educated in the city school district, the obituary said. She had eight siblings.

After graduating from high school, she went into training to become a CNA, while at the same time working as a school bus driver for the Grandview School District to support herself and her children. She met her husband, Dwayne Ramsey, because of the job. They were married for 20 years.

Taylor-Ramsey was a proud Jehovah’s Witness, having been baptized in 2019 at an international convention held in St. Louis. Her faith gave her the “courage to face any trial that came her way,” the obituary said.

She was a mother to seven children, and later became a grandmother to three. A naturally family-oriented person, she was passionate about hosting get-togethers, like her outdoor movie nights where she screened films from a projector.

She enjoyed gardening in her free time, too, and traveled across the U.S.

She is survived by her husband, Dwayne Ramsey; children, Iesha Taylor, Angelique Taylor, Kierra Taylor, Davonte Taylor, Raphael Taylor, Maurice Ramsey and Vincent Ramsey; grandchildren, London Taylor, DaJuan Ramsey, Raphael Taylor Jr.; parents, Epise Taylor, Brisco York and Vera English; siblings, Michael Taylor, Timothy Taylor, Mark Taylor, Sam Bowle, Lasonya Taylor, Latoya Redick, Cinda Waters and LaKendra Elgin; and several aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins.

This story was originally published March 13, 2022 at 5:00 AM.