ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. – “In spite of her passing, it’s a time for rejoicing because Momma would not want people to be sad.”
With those words, Carrie McCrary characterized her mother, Carrie Johnson, who held the sentimental title, “St. Augustine’s Sweetheart”. Johnson passed away Tuesday morning at the age of 83 after a battle with lung cancer.
“She defies categorization, she didn’t have a resume,” said St. Augustine mayor Nancy Shaver Tuesday night. To that point, Carrie Johnson never held office, nor even an official title in her life, according to her family. But if the value of a life can be measured in nicknames, Johnson – perhaps best known as “Miss Carrie” and “The Voice of Lincolnville” – indeed stands above most. She accomplished much without need of political power.
“The Accord Freedom Trail, the Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center,” Mayor Shaver noted as just some of Johnson’s devotions. “Miss Carrie was a part of the founding of [the Accord Freedom Trail],” which commemorates participants in the Civil Rights Movement, so much of which was rooted in her beloved Lincolnville neighborhood of St. Augustine.
But those who knew Johnson best say she was not strident in striking down racism, instead choosing to defeat it the only way she saw fit.
“She always said ‘You might not be able to change a whole group at one time’,” daughter June Lester recalled, “’but you can undo racism one person at a time’.”
And always with a consistent demeanor, according to Mayor Shaver, who also calls Lincolnville home.
“She loved her fellow man, and everyone knew that.”
As much as Johnson decried injustice, friends say they’ll remember her for singing rejoice.
“The Christmas caroling thing with the Red Trains in town, I did that with her for seven years,” St. Augustine Police officer Mark Samson recalled.
Even her means of getting around town – a distinctive tricycle she called her “Lambourghini,” was known ubiquitously.
“She would ride her bicycle – tricycle, actually – all day, every day, around,” said Samson’s fellow St. Augustine Police officer Dee Brown.
Mayor Shaver told First Coast News you could not live in Lincolnville without seeing Johnson and her precious ride.
“She held a biblical truth in her being, and it’s how she walked the streets, or actually rode the streets on her tricycle,” the mayor said.
Even police, whose job it is to serve and protect, say Johnson was an invaluable resource who could easily have been considered an honorary officer.
“If we needed anything in the community, she was the person to go to,” Brown asserted.
The same warmth she used to change society, they say, is the warmth with which Johnson greeted every person she met.
“Everybody was darling, sweetheart, or baby, and she meant it,” daughter Carrie McCrary described her mother’s disposition. “Yeah, she meant that!,” her sister June agreed.
“Hello darling! … Bye!,” the mayor affected her best impression with a gentle southern lilt.
And, through it all, Carrie Johnson – Miss Carrie, St. Augustine’s Sweetheart, and the Voice of Lincolnville – achieved so much by way of so much modesty.
“An ordinary woman that lived an extraordinary life,” Brown concluded.

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