‘Love is stronger than anger’: Nick Johnson’s courageous college football story endures at Earlham

By the end of Part 1 of the Nick Johnson story, posted on Sept. 18, he had been a student-athlete and coach for the track and football teams during 21 years at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. In November 2018, he stepped down from his job after four years and an 0-40 record as head football coach, the school terminated the sport. At the same time, Johnson’s wife Mel, a former Quakers basketball player and coach, was desperately ill.

The Johnsons, Indiana natives who met at Earlham, had lived their entire adult lives near their alma mater.

How was Nick Johnson processing the end of his dream to improve Earlham’s football fortunes or even to see others carry on that mission?

“I was angry about it and, in some ways, I am still angry,” Johnson said, “but love is stronger than anger.”

Johnson, then 39, decided to remain at the school that meant so much to him and to Mel.

“What I have to focus on is how I can contribute to the things that do the most good,” he said.  “And, in the end, everything that is good in my life has come out of my decision to attend Earlham College.” 

Johnson worked in Earlham’s institutional advancement and alumni engagement departments for a couple of years, before returning to athletics when his longtime friend, Steve Sakosits, the baseball coach who was then also the interim athletic director, brought him back as assistant AD.

In 2020, Mel underwent a high-risk multi-visceral transplant, receiving five new digestive organs. For the better part of two years, she defied expectations and lived with and experienced her family in a manner that had been so elusive for so long.

Then, on July 18, 2022, Mel’s long battle came to an end. She died of organ failure at age 41 and was buried at the Earlham Cemetery, adjacent to campus.

“Mel was such a blessing and taught me so much about character, about who I was and who I could be,” Johnson said. “She really was the best of us.

“She had told me to be happy, to be grateful and to live. And I think one of my biggest regrets is for six months after she passed, I didn’t do any of those things. I was very depressed, faking it through most days just to exist.”

Throughout their childhood, the Johnsons’ two children, daughter Jayden and son Jacob, had seen their parents’ strength and devotion to one another endure through unimaginable torment. Now they were witnessing their father’s unremitting sorrow and anguish without Mel.

“There was a point where we could hear him crying before he would go to bed,” Jayden said.

Johnson frequently visited Mel’s grave and brought a book given to him by her cousin: Through A Season of Grief: Devotions for Your Journey from Mourning to Joy.

“I did its devotionals. I read and prayed and talked to her,” Johnson said. “I missed our conversations so much. I told her about the kids. The hardest segment of the book was about [how] ‘life is for the living; move forward.’

“And I could feel her tell me, ‘You have so much more living to do, stop feeling so sorry for yourself, work, be a good dad, fall in love again; you don’t have much time. Be present for our kids and for all the kids you work with.’ ”

Johnson said therapy helped him out of his abyss and so did speaking with one of Mel’s friends, Laura McMahon. 

“I always knew he was a very good man and a good dad, and he took very good care of Mel and they had a great relationship,” said McMahon, a divorcee.

Johnson turned to McMahon for advice, including pointers when he contemplated trying online dating.

“Then we started hanging out and talked through things and I felt I really liked her and I had no idea she felt the same,” Johnson said of McMahon. “So I took a chance and we went with her two kids and mine to the movies to see Barbie. Her children dutifully shielded her from me, creating a barrier. After that we had more candid conversation about what it might be like to be in a relationship, and it just blossomed from there.”

Nearly three years after the couple began dating, Johnson decided to pop the question during a Caribbean cruise this April with the four kids – everybody was in on the plan except McMahon. At the moment of truth, on the ship’s formal night, Johnson asked a waiter to take a group picture. Then he stepped back, got down on one knee and asked for another photo.

Overcome by the occasion of presenting the ring, however, Johnson didn’t propose. He froze. 

With all eyes in the dining room on the unfolding event, someone yelled, “Say yes!” McMahon responded, “He didn’t ask.”

The message did get through, the pair is engaged and the wedding has been scheduled for July 2027.

Bonita Washington-Lacey, Earlham’s vice president of student life and Johnson’s longtime mentor and friend, said, “Nick was just searching to find joy, and I think he now has found that joy and I’m so grateful for that.

“Laura has filled a gap in his heart.” 

Johnson said, “Mel gave me four great gifts, our two kids, who are a miracle; a mindset of strength, hope, perseverance and courage – she lived it; and Laura is another gift from her.”

On the work front, when Earlham sought a new athletic director late last year, Washington-Lacey recommended Johnson.

At many colleges, the candidacy of a coach who compiled an 0-40 record would be a non-starter. Not at Earlham, which hired Johnson in December. School president Paul Sniegowski, an Indiana University alum who’s been in the job since 2024, said of the winless record, “That was really not a factor.

“He’s ‘Mr. Earlham,’ in many ways the heart and soul of the place,” Sniegowski said. “He’s a man who demonstrates resilience, character, enthusiasm, care for everyone. It’s resilience that’s focused on other people, which is the heart of being a good administrator and really, to me, of being a good person.”

Johnson said he never imagined he’d be given this opportunity – and that by all rights, another person should have gotten it.

“If Mel was still with us, she’d probably be athletic director, not me,” Johnson said. “You’ve never met a more dedicated, more determined, more intellectual, capable person.” 

That’s not to say Johnson is projecting anything other than preparedness and purpose. 

“My whole life calling, I feel, is just to help student-athletes attain a higher level of understanding of themselves, know who they really are and be the best versions of themselves,” he said. 

Johnson’s calling and commitment were clear to his peers back in 2015 when they gave him the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference Coach of the Year Award despite an 0-10 record in his rookie season. His fellow coaches recognized all that Johnson had to surmount in leading an undermanned football team while caring for his critically ill wife and their kids. Citing his staff’s unsung efforts, Johnson was reluctant to accept the award and he never put it up at work, instead relegating it long ago to a basement file cabinet at home. “I just didn’t feel right displaying it, because it had just my name on it,” Johnson said.

Mel’s name and legacy have been perpetuated at Earlham through her posthumous induction into the school’s Hall of Fame and the annual “Melissa Johnson/HOPE Classic” men’s and women’s benefit basketball tournament that raises awareness for organ donation. And Johnson said he plans to have her No. 31 retired in November. That’ll be especially meaningful to a certain Quaker freshman who wore that number in high school. Jayden announced in February that she would attend Earlham and follow in her mother’s basketball footsteps.

Jayden joining the Quakers is the latest poignant element of a narrative that already seemed worthy of a screenplay. The ideal person to play her father appears a lock, as Johnson bears a slight resemblance and has had similar hairstyles to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the movie star, professional wrestler and former football player. That’s not all – Nick Johnson has been a fan of The Rock for decades and some have even called him by the actor’s renowned nickname.

A motion picture about “The Rock” of Earlham, however, might only come to fruition with fulfilment of a long-range objective Johnson has as athletic director. It’s a goal that is no surprise and Sniegowski sounds open to it.

“We’d love to bring football back,” Sniegowski said, adding, “I can’t tell you when, if ever, we’ll be able to do it.” A working group he established, with his first-year AD as a member, is holding meetings to consider such a revival.

Uphill causes, of course, are nothing new for Johnson, and neither is optimism.

“I don’t know any other way to exist but to be hopeful and to work toward what it is that we’re all hoping for,” Johnson said. “I think things can be done. I think systems can change. I think paradigms can shift. I believe that a zeitgeist can be entirely different. You can go from worst to first. IU proved it.”

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IIndiana University’s Curt Cignetti, the head coach whose Hoosiers proved that and won the national championship after he said their story would “be a hell of a movie,” now has a school-record 19-game winning streak. And Johnson — the ex-coach in the same state who lost 40 straight — moves forward without football, at least for now, while conveying a characteristic tone overseeing 17 other varsity sports.

Johnson concluded his first letter to student-athletes by saying:

With character, courage and commitment, we can redefine the levels of success we will achieve at Earlham. Raise the standard, choose to be great and let’s win in the classroom, in the arena, and in our community, for good!

It’s a great day to be alive!

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