George Hopkins Johnson was born in Madison, Wisconsin on December 13, 1901. His parents were Hobart Stanley Johnson and Elizabeth Hopkins Johnson. He attended Madison public schools and Middlesex School, Concord, Massachusetts. In 1923 he graduated from Harvard College. He attended graduate school at the University of Wisconsin in 1923-1924.
After working several summers for the Gisholt Machine Company, incorporated by his grandfather in 1889, Johnson began work on a permanent basis in February 1924. For most of the next four years he worked in Europe as Sales Engineer. In 1928 he became Vice-President and Director of Gisholt. From 1940 to 1964 he served as President, and from 1964 to 1966 as Chairman of the Board of the Gisholt Corporation. After his retirement at the end of 1966, Johnson agreed to remain on the Board of Directors of Giddings and Lewis Inc., the parent company of Gisholt. He resigned in February 1971 when Giddings and Lewis voted to close the Gisholt plant in Madison and move only certain of its operations to Fond du Lac.
In 1942-1943 Johnson served as Director of the Tools Division of the War Production Board as a dollar-a-year man. He was a consultant to the Board throughout the war. In 1945 he was chosen to go to Germany and to Moscow as a member of the American Delegation of the Allied Commission on Reparations. Two years later he returned to Germany as a member of the American Business Executive Mission, a special War Department assignment to reassess the production outlook of heavy industry.
At various times Johnson served as Director of the First National Bank of Madison; Director of Television-Wisconsin Inc., Madison; Director and President of the Gisholt John A. Johnson Foundation; Director and President of the National Machine Tool Builders Association; Trustee of Ripon College, Ripon, Wisconsin; Trustee of the Committee for Economic Development, Washington, D.C.; and director of several insurance companies based in Wisconsin.
He married Sara Greenwood Fletcher of Wellesley, Massachusetts, on September 25, 1925. They had four children -- Richard Fletcher, Hobart Stanley II, Graham Underhill, and Kaia Kildahl. The Johnsons resided in Madison and Tucson until George Johnson's death in 1974.
