Paul Marshall Johnson passed away in Auburn at sunset on October 1, 2025, at the age of 79, after sudden complications from a long illness. His wife Peggy and his children, Charles and Laura, were at his side holding his hands as the sun went down over the water.
Paul was born on March 14, 1946, in Tulsa, Oklahoma to the late Charles Woodson Johnson and Frances (Ebbs) Johnson. His earliest memories were of Boerne in the Texas Hill Country where his father established his first medical practice, making house calls to farms and ranches throughout Kendall and Kerr Counties. He then spent most of his childhood and high school years in the city of San Antonio, graduating as valedictorian of Thomas Jefferson High School and making lifelong friendships. He enrolled in Rice University in 1963, where he studied political science and economics, graduating summa cum laude in 1967. He was selected for Phi Beta Kappa and went on to pursue graduate study in political science at Stanford. After completing his MA, he was drafted into the Army in 1969. Paul served a year at Fort Bliss and a year overseas in Vietnam at Cam Ranh Bay, where he received the Bronze Star for meritorious service. In 1971 he returned to Stanford, where he married his college sweetheart Dr. Armanda “Peggy” Sittig in 1972.
The next year, Paul was appointed Fellow and Resident Director of the Stanford-Warsaw University student exchange program. Paul and Peggy spent a year in Warsaw, a memorable experience that would furnish a wealth of stories over the years–including the time the censors for the University of Warsaw Library, out of an excess of caution, forbade Paul access to a copy of his own published work. After returning to the free world, Paul completed his graduate studies at Stanford in 1976 and was awarded a PhD in political science in 1978.
The couple moved across the US to New Haven in 1976, where Paul accepted a lectureship at Yale, and continued teaching as assistant professor of political science until 1981. He was a scholar of comparative political systems, political economy, and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Between Yale and his new position at Florida State University, he and Peggy welcomed their first child, a son; during his seven years in Tallahassee, they welcomed their second child, a daughter, in 1986. Later he taught at the University of Houston and Rice University, and UC Santa Cruz before joining the Department of Political Science at Auburn University in 1991, settling down permanently with his family in “the loveliest metropolitan statistical area on the plains.” He taught courses on political economy, intelligence, and political science research methods, helped to inaugurate Auburn’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in 2001, and served as department chair from 2001-2006. He retired in 2012, returning to teaching one course a semester as associate professor emeritus until 2016.
A proud Texan, a dedicated teacher, and a thoroughgoing dad, Paul loved San Antonio and the Hill Country, gardening, and doling out detailed investment advice to anyone who asked. He was curious about everything, an inveterate researcher, and had warm opinions on Mexican food and barbecue. He was a font of both wry humor and the corniest jokes in the world –always seeking to make conversation easy. A highlight of each year was the annual fig harvest, when far-flung in-laws and cousins arrived to help pick ripe figs from his growing collection of Brown Turkey fig trees and turn them into homemade jam. An avid genealogist with contacts all over the country, he never tired of recounting the stories of his reputable and disreputable ancestors, including his father’s family in Mississippi and his mother’s family in western North Carolina.
He is survived by Armanda, his children Charles and Laura, their spouses, beloved nieces, nephews, in-laws and cousins in Texas, Tennessee, Colorado and Washington DC, and many friends and students in Auburn and throughout the country.
