The generosity of  '31E
Fanfare for a Scholarship

By Debra Lynn Sills

Sophomore Louise Ganiard was one of two Louises living in the Alpha Chi Omega sorority house in 1930. The "other Louise" was quite popular with the men on campus, and as the military ball approached, ROTC Cadet Lawton Johnson, widely admired on campus for his trumpet-playing, decided to invite the other Louise as his date.

Lawton did not know the young woman's last name, but he did know her sorority affiliation. When he went to the house and asked for Louise, the only Louise upstairs came down to accept his invitation. Not until he came to pick her up for the ball did he discover that there were two Louises and that his date for the ball, Louise Ganiard, was the "wrong" one.

When they went to the ball, Lawton disappeared, and Louise thought that he must have run out on her in disappointment. Soon, however, she was relieved to see her date up on stage playing his trumpet with the band. Or at least somewhat relieved, says Janine Weins, the daughter of Lawton and Louise Johnson, "because my mother felt as though she was being stood up for a trumpet."

If so, that was the last time Lawton stood Louise up. They married in 1932, a year after their graduation, and enjoyed 54 years together until Lawton Johnson's death in 1986. And the trumpet that sparked a moment of jealousy remained "a part of his life," Weins says. It created traditions within the family, like her father's playing 'Taps' every Fourth of July. At other gatherings he'd toot some of his favorite songs, like "Far Above Cayuga's Waters."

The trumpet accompanied Johnson almost everywhere he went as an engineer, soldier, salesman for a division of US Steel and finally as an executive in a research and management consulting firm. Weins says her father always advised young people to select smaller instruments like the trumpet "because they are easier to take along on planes and trains."

When the trumpet came out, Louise would always "think about Michigan and her time there." With thoughts of Michigan in mind, the Johnsons established in 1986 the Louise G. and Lawton Johnson Engineering Class of 1931 scholarship, one of 76 '31E scholarships granted since the class began awarding them in 1982. Recipients must have a 3.5 GPA to qualify, and they may retain the award for four years if they maintain at least a 3.25 GPA.

When Louise Johnson and her daughter, both of whom live in New Hampshire, learned in 1995 that freshman scholarship candidate Tristan Pruss of Goodells, Michigan, was also a trumpeter, they were happy to recommend him for the award. At the awards banquet that fall, Weins told Pruss that she and her mother also wanted to present him with Johnson's trumpet.

"My jaw just about hit the floor," says Pruss, who played in the Campus Band for several years. "But my mom prodded me and said something along the lines of, 'I think there is only one answer to an offer like that.'"

Pruss received the fully reconditioned, silver-plated Conn Limited trumpet a few months later, and he played "The Victors" on it at the '31E awards banquet last October.

The scholarship and trumpet have also connected him with other members of the Engineering Class of '31. "The word generous cannot even describe the good-hearted and wonderful nature of the people in this group," he says.

Pruss says he intends to pass the instrument on to another U-M trumpeter in the hope of establishing a tradition.

Debra Lynn Sills '98 of Queens, New York, is a U-M News and Information Services work-study student.