Theodore Courtland Johanson ’59

Theodore Courtland Johanson ’59 died on June 5, 2015. He entered Dartmouth from Kimball Union Academy and was a member of Sigma Chi (president his senior year) and Dragon. Following graduation he served in the Army and then received an M.B.A. from Harvard in 1962. After a brief period working with his family’s shoe manufacturing business in Massachusetts, he founded the Falcon Shoe Manufacturing Co. in Lewiston, Maine, in 1963. Prior to its sale in 1995, the company grew to employ several hundred employees and made leather boots for a number of retailers, including L.L. Bean. The company gave 10 percent of its profits to local charities and shared half the remainder with its employees. At the time of the sale the employees owned about one-third of the business. Following the sale, Ted worked for the new owners for about five years before retiring to Vinalhaven, located on an island off the Maine coast, where he worked as a lobsterman and volunteered in a number of local positions, including on the town budget committee, as president of the island medical center and as an advisor to the Fisherman’s Co-op. During the course of his career Ted served as a director of several Maine companies. He was an avid skier and a teacher at Sunday River Skiway, and enjoyed hiking, canoeing and playing tennis. He leaves his wife of more than 30 years, Patricia, children Marcy, Theodore and Erika and their spouses and six grandchildren.