The Johnson Family: A Temple Legacy of Community, Ambition and Resilience

When a fire destroyed her childhood home in 1982, Kia Johnson, KLN ’86, remembers that her father had her and her sisters back at school the very next day. “Keep going,” Kia remembers him saying, “You girls have to keep moving forward.” That spirit, rooted in resilience and forward momentum, has defined the Johnson family for generations.

By Eddy Kosik

Months before Kia Johnson, KLN ’86, applied to Temple in 1982, a terrible fire burned down her family’s home in Harrisburg. Normally the house would have been empty at that hour, with her parents at work and the four girls all in school. On this snowy January day, however, school had been canceled. Kia and her three sisters were still asleep when the house began filling with black smoke. To this day, Kia’s sister Paula Johnson, CPH ’88, still flashes back to that morning whenever she smells smoke. “Whether it’s just a campfire or an actual fire, I can smell it before anyone else,” Paula said. “Every time that happens, it takes me back to that space.”

All four girls made it out of the home unscathed. Kia, just shy of her 17th birthday at the time, remembers standing outside in her pajamas with her sisters, watching their home burn.

Later that evening, the four of them watched the fire again on the local news with their parents in a hotel room. The very next day, their father had the Johnson girls back in school. “My dad said, ‘We are not going to feel sorry for ourselves,’” Kia remembered. Community members donated clothes to the family, though there was no replacement for Kia’s basketball uniform. When she had a game later that week, her coach taped numbers to the back of her shirt.

The Johnsons refused to let life stop after the loss. “When you lose everything except your life, the material things aren’t important,” Kia said. “Some things I wish I still had, like family photos, but furniture and your house can be replaced. Your life can’t. It puts things in perspective. You survived for a reason. There is still a purpose for you. You have to find out what that is, because so many people could have been in that same situation and didn’t make it. But we were spared. We have to take that energy and move forward, to give back and be a bright light.”

Not long after the fire, Kia’s father drove her to Philadelphia to visit Temple University. The school was already familiar to him; his brother, Kia’s Uncle Walter, had graduated from Temple in 1957, studying accounting at Fox before working as a computer programmer at IBM. Kia remembers her father walking beside her on campus. “[He] was like my own little marketing guy,” Kia said. "He had a folder with all of my grades, my basketball statistics, my extracurricular activities.”

While many of her high school peers headed to Penn State, Kia had other plans. “I wanted to chart my own path, to go back to Philadelphia where all my family was and where I was born. In essence, it was my hometown. It was so beautiful to me.” Other schools tried to recruit her to play basketball, but her mind was already made up.

Moving to Philadelphia came with its own adjustments. Kia’s first lecture class had more people than her entire high school graduating class. “Going someplace the opposite of Cheers, where nobody knew my name,” she said, actually felt liberating. Being one of many made her feel part of something bigger. Being a member of the women’s basketball team helped too. She bonded with her teammates quickly and even ended up rooming with one of them. By Kia's second year, she’d secured a full athletic scholarship to Temple, and her family became a familiar sight in the stands. Uncle Walter in particular still fondly remembers catching every game he could.

Kia would go on to declare as a communications student during her second year. She considered studying history, but didn’t feel like that field of study offered a clear path for her career. Instead, she chose journalism after, as she puts it, realizing that today’s news stories become tomorrow’s history. Today, Kia works as a producer for the news agency Reuters, conducting interviews and providing live coverage of breaking news. Her career came full circle this past October when she received a Lew Klein Alumni in the Media Award for her achievements.

Kia received a Lew Klein Alumni in the Media Award in October 2025 for her career achievements.

Kia received a Lew Klein Alumni in the Media Award in October 2025 for her career achievements.

“I’ve covered the Olympics twice,” she recalled. “I love doing politics and presidential campaigns. I covered the White House for five or six years. I’ve been around a lot of world leaders and a lot of historic events.” It is not the career she imagined for herself as a young person, but looking back, she can see how the pieces of her life led her there. She remembers delivering newspapers as a teenager, and she once worked so hard on a high school project involving survivors of World War II that her teacher rewarded her with tickets to a college basketball game.

“These little opportunities you get when you’re younger,” Kia said, “you can’t imagine how those little building blocks stack up and become the whole castle.”

For her sister Paula, who began at Temple during Kia’s junior year, things did not go quite as smoothly in her first year. Arriving in Philadelphia and navigating Temple’s campus, she said, “was definitely a culture shock for me.” Paula felt different from her outgoing, athletic sister. “I was very much into books, very much into the band.”

Just as Kia found her community through basketball, Paula eventually found her footing in the marching band, a smaller community within the larger university. She and Kia do not remember hearing much about their Uncle Walter’s time at Temple decades earlier, though if they had, Paula might have recognized her own experience in his. Walter also joined the band and the choir early in his time at Temple in the 1950s. “That’s where I found my joy,” Walter said of that time. Paula met her now-husband, Pierre Johnson, CLA ’87, through the band. Music is a family affair for Pierre as well. His sister, Joyce Johnson, CLA ’83, was a member of the marching band along with her husband, Robbin Smith, BYR ’82.

Paula also formed lifelong friends in her physical therapy cohort. Physical therapy had been an interest of Paula’s since high school, where she was involved in a health careers club and volunteered as a candy striper, a group of adolescent hospital volunteers who were known for their candy cane–like uniforms. Paula was accepted into Temple’s early assurance program and, upon graduating, worked as a physical therapist until 2016, when she transitioned into teaching the vocation at Messiah College.

Zachary James, STH ’08, Kia Johnson and Walter Johnson, FOX ’57.

Zachary James, STH ’08, Kia Johnson and Walter Johnson, FOX ’57.

She has earned doctorates in both physical therapy and education, though she insists that the letters behind her name don’t mean as much as what those letters allow her to do for others. Each year, Paula has a group of about 36 students for whom she tries to be the kind of positive influence that her own professors were for her. Paula views herself as thriving in building small community in her classrooms, trying to create for her students the space that she longed to find for herself upon arriving at Temple that first year. As a professor, Paula's life again echoes her Uncle Walter’s. After retiring from IBM, he taught at Temple and then at Community College of Philadelphia for about 15 years.

After Kia and Paula graduated from Temple, their sister Beverly Johnson, CLA ’97, followed. She passed away in 2020. Their cousin, Zachary James, STH ’08, is now the CEO of Rebel Hill Consulting, a business that helps small businesses, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs develop. “I’ve worked with hundreds of brands since starting in December of 2015,” Zachary said. “My ability to adapt to all sorts of circumstances, to build strong relationships, to communicate effectively with clients and to network at the highest levels were all skills I tie directly to my time at Temple’s School of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality [Management].”

Zachary recalls not only hearing about the experiences of his Uncle Walter and cousins, but also seeing how his family returned to Temple Homecoming & Family Weekend year after year. Zachary has given back to the university for 15 years and recently joined the Temple University Alumni Association (TUAA), where he now serves as a director-at-large, inspired in part by Kia’s own involvement. She serves as the vice president of operations for TUAA.

Zachary James, chancellor and former president Richard Englert, Kia Johnson, and Walter Johnson.

Zachary James, chancellor and former president Richard Englert, Kia Johnson, and Walter Johnson.

“It means so much that I can still give back,” Kia said. “I love being with such a great group of people.” She has found herself developing a new perspective on the university, learning how the school operates from the inside. “We are organizing and trying to continue making the university even better,” Kia explained. “We are getting people involved, getting people to come back, getting people to donate in any way they can, whether it is time or financially. Just giving in some way.”

Daughters of both Kia and Paula have attended Temple as well. Kia’s daughter, Sydney Sloan, KLN ’19, now works at NBC Sports. Paula’s daughter, Victoria, briefly attended Temple as well. The family still attends university events together, most recently Homecoming & Family Weekend in October 2025. They remain passionate about the university. “I have been to other schools,” Paula described. “I have other degrees. I do not claim any of them in the same way. I have a Temple license plate. My husband has a Temple license plate. I claim Temple as my space. This is the place that got me started on my journey.”

Kia and her daughter, Sydney Sloan, KLN ’19.

Kia and her daughter, Sydney Sloan, KLN ’19.

Walter feels similarly. “Temple broadened me,” he said. “I was a Philly kid. I would ride my bicycle around West Philly and North and South Philly. That was my life. Temple gave me a wider perspective on the world, just seeing a little more than Philadelphia and realizing there is a lot more out there.” Walter went on to bike across the United States in the 1976 Bikecentennial and, even now at ninety years old, continues to lead rides across Philadelphia in his local bike club. Until COVID-19 shut it down in 2020, he was also regularly playing with Temple’s Night Owls community band, something he intendsto pick up again.

For Kia, she still thinks back to how it felt to find Temple after losing nearly everything to that house fire in 1982. “I will always feel grateful for the opportunity I received from Temple. After all the adversity my family went through that year with the house fire, I ended up on my feet at Temple.” Back then, it was the Johnson family’s community in Harrisburg that supported them by donating time, money and clothes, reinforcing a core belief that had already been passed through the family for generations.

“It stems from a commitment from my parents to make sure that we saw something important in education and in what we do for community,” Paula said. “We have all figured out how to step into that. I think it is also that generational piece that came from our father’s generation and from the generation before.”

That community mindset comes naturally to Kia. After all, she has been playing team sports all her life. “It makes you a better person. You are not just thinking about yourself; you are thinking about everything from a team perspective. How can I make this team better? What do I bring to the table? Sometimes you are selfless. Maybe it is not what you want to do, but it is what the team needs.

From Left: Sydney, Zach, Kia and Walter at a Temple football game.

From Left: Sydney, Zach, Kia and Walter at a Temple football game.

“I carry those team values with me. In my work, in my community, in the alumni association. My grandmother used to say, ‘Many hands make light work.’ If everyone chips in a little bit, one person does not have to do everything. Everybody takes a little portion and you get the job done more efficiently and better. That team thinking never leaves me.”

Kia credits her years of playing basketball with that mentality, but it’s consistent across her family. Just as Kia found community with her team, Paula found her own with the marching band and with her classroom, and Walter with the Night Owls and his bike club. The one community that continues to unite them all is Temple, a family legacy they are still building and passing forward. “We’ve all been very successful, and we take pride in being Temple Made,” Kia said. “You go there, you work hard and opportunity opens its doors for you.”