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He taught young Louis Arthur Johnson that there was only one profession fitting for a Virginia gentleman. Be a lawyer, he advised the boy, a lawyer and a Democrat. Shortly after his grandfather's death, 16-year-old Louis announced, in a characteristically firm fashion: "I am going to be on the Supreme Court of the United States some day."
Louis Johnson's own father had no plantation. He was a grocery clerk in Roanoke who married Katherine Arthur, the colonel's daughter. A man of good family, little money and less education, Marcellus Johnson taught his son the value of an honest dollar, taught him to think and speak for himself, prodded him on with the fierceness of a man who has missed opportunity himself. After his counsel, no one had to teach Louis Arthur Johnson to get out in front and stay there.
Young Louis always captained the baseball teams. He dived from the highest branch by the swimming hole on Tinker's Creek He led his class in high school. At 15, he took over the local Epworth League and made it into a tri-city organization which embraced two neighboring towns. In the fall of 1908,17-year-old Louis Johnson, handsome, strapping and 6 ft.1 in. tall, descended on the University of Virginia at Charlottesville.
Big Man on Campus. Before Louis Johnson's arrival, university politics had been dominated by the upper-crust fraternities. Louis soon changed all that, at least for his day. The Betas, the Dekes, the Sigma Chis would all have been delighted to accept the big, aggressive kid with the curly black hair and determined chin. But Louis became a Delta Chi, organized a merger of lesser fraternities and non-fraternity men and began winning student elections with monotonous regularity.
By the time he graduated, Louis Johnson had been three-time president of the law school, vice president of the oldest university Y.M.C.A. in the nation, secretary-treasurer of the Civic Club. He was also a crack debater, and a good athlete (boxing and wrestling). To the despair of some classmates (and with the help of a photographic memory), he had also made top grades without even seeming to try.
In his senior year, Louis Johnson strolled beside the serpentine walks, a mandolin tucked casually under his arm, hatless and sporting the latest in peg-top trousers, the biggest man on campus.
The Private Book. After graduation, he found no likely place in Virginia to set up a law practice, so he crossed over into West Virginia, settled in Clarksburg, and set out to run things. Elected to the State House of Delegates, he was made majority floor leader in his first term, at 26. Three months later, the U.S. entered World War I, and Johnson went off to fight through the Meuse-Argonne offensive as a captain of infantry. He returned with a hatful of ideas on what was wrong with the Army. On an impulse which was later to become a habit, he sat down and wrote a book-length report on his views. He sent it off to Chief of Staff Peyton C. March.
The Army was so impressed with Johnson's ideas on personnel and purchasing that he was offered a majority on the spot. Johnson wasn't interested. He went back to Clarksburg, married Ruth Maxwell, one of the richest, prettiest girls in town, and took up where he had left off.