Vikings Territory: To Joe Johnson In Valhalla — Skol, My Friend

Press release from Vikings Territory:

July 18, 2021

I didn’t know Joe Johnson when he was a young high school hockey stud for Edison and was pictured, with his sister, a future U of M goalie, Stephanie (and a couple other promising players) on the sports page of the Star Tribune. But I would have liked to have met him then. He must have been a terror.

Sports, as in life itself, often favors the bold, focused, and hard-working — all three attributes that describe my friend, Joe, who tragically passed away earlier this week. We met about seven years ago when VikingsJournal.com was nearing its last legs and Joe was working there while building his own sports publishing network on the side. He was already a dynamo with his work ethic, his desire, his Purple passion, and his unique and ever-present sense of humor. We hit it off right away.

Suffice it to say, we had a blast. I had long been a professional writer, but soon after I started writing for Joe’s site, he asked me to join him on a podcast, which — to an aging ink-stained wretch — was a bit of a foreign word. We started by meeting at the Mermaid Bar in Mounds View (with VWO member and Vikings superfan Skolt) and began recording “Three Deep,” our podcast’s first iteration.

The venture was short-lived, but Joe and I continued in a new iteration of the podcast as his site began to grow. Always the positive force in everything he did and with everyone he encountered, Joe, by fits and starts, began recruiting local writers and podcasters to his site. Every ounce of his being went into the project — evidenced by how he (a sober alcoholic) worked in a liquor store to raise enough money to pay writers and keep them around. There was a time when (as he said on the podcast) he was on food stamps and lived with his folks because everything he had gone into the sites.

But Joe was so much more than the businesses he created. While filled with passion and emotion that could rise and fall like a ship on high seas, Joe tried to make everyone he worked with feel better in his presence. Joe was a very good salesman, so I often had to temper my views of some of the promises he made — as I knew this business and how difficult it is to make those promises happen. But when I think about it now, I realize that was Joe’s way of thinking his dreams into existence. Personally, I avoid mentioning something that could happen (like a Vikings NFC title win) for fear of jinxing it, whereas Joe’s modus operandi was that if you wish for something, you can say enough to will it into reality. And he did that with the Uffda! Sports network.

But it wasn’t — Joe was too genuine for that — and I was reminded of it every week on our podcast. Despite whatever struggles he was having with the business or his personal life, for that one hour a week, he put it aside and we rejoined our friendship. From the get-go on the air, we fit together seamlessly despite coming from different generations. I was the seasoned Vikings reporter/fan (who had seen too many Vikings Super Bowl losses), and he was the impassioned Purple ambassador who loved the game in large part because his dad raised him on it. We discussed and argued and chided and praised and laughed — we laughed a lot. He made me laugh with his offbeat sense of humor and also generously laughed at my wordplay or dad jokes.

And now Joe’s voice is silenced, and I am at a loss in his passing’s wake. When this Wednesday rolls around, there will be no show agenda coming to me via text, no Vikings storylines to consider. No laughing into a computer microphone. The silence saddens me and will be something tangible to move past. But I hope that Joe’s legacy does not go silent; I hope the great network he spent his life and his energy to build continues and grows and thrives like some tall tree ever-stretching to the sky. I hope.

“Sometimes it makes me sad though–[Joe] being gone. I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. But still, the place you live in is that much more gray and empty that they’re gone.

This press release was produced by Vikings Territory. The views expressed here are the author’s own.