James Johnson Overcame Deafness : Foster Parent to Teen-agers Dies at 67

James Howard Johnson of Mission Viejo, who overcame deafness to become an aerospace engineer and foster parent to more than 20 teen-agers, has died at his home of bone cancer. He was 67.

More than 150 family members and friends attended a Mission Viejo/Saddleback Valley Elks Lodge memorial service Sunday at which Johnson, a 16-year member, was eulogized as “a perfect competitor who never complained about anything,” lodge spokesman Joe Urban said.

Until cancer forced Johnson into early retirement, he was an aerospace engineer for North American Rockwell’s space division in Downey, according to his widow, Aldine.

Johnson had attended St. Olaf College in Minnesota before studying at Western University in Los Angeles, she said.

His educational achievements were no mean accomplishment for “a guy who had all the cards stacked against him,” Urban said. Johnson was born deaf and as a child attended a special school for the hearing impaired.

Johnson proved a versatile athlete and went on to win all-city honors in basketball, baseball and football at a high school in Rochester, Minn., Mrs. Johnson said.

Although the Johnsons had two daughters and a son of their own, all now grown, the couple cared for more than 20 foster teen-agers, the youngest of whom is now 34.

“I came from a big family and we both liked teen-agers very much,” Mrs. Johnson said. “We thought maybe we could get a deaf child, but over the years they only sent us one.”

Johnson’s body was cremated and his ashes spread over the ocean near Laguna Beach.