Anoka County attorney's office: All in the family

Robert Johnson is standing at the crossroads. At 65, the Anoka County attorney has two years remaining in office -- an office he's occupied 26 years, an office his family has held for nearly six decades.

But Robert M.A. Johnson has yet to decide if he'll run for reelection when this term ends. He loves being a part of the justice system in the county in which he was raised, but admits, "I liked it when the county was smaller," when things weren't quite so "complex."

Listen to his father, Robert W. Johnson, 91, his predecessor in office, who was first elected in 1950 and held the county attorney's job for 32 years:

"I'm almost embarrassed to tell you this story," said the elder Johnson, a lineman and all-conference football player for the University of Minnesota's 1938 national championship team.

"The sheriff, Mike Auspos, was 6 foot 5, a wonderful guy. He would bring people he arrested into my office and ask them to confess. One guy said, 'Mr. Johnson, I don't want to talk to you.' And the sheriff leaned over and said, 'I think we want to override that decision.'"

It wasn't just the county that seemed smaller in those days. R.W., as he's affectionately known to family members and friends, was a college dorm-mate of future Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Orville Freeman, who would be elected governor of Minnesota before serving as U.S. secretary of agriculture under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Their friendships were lifelong. Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman says it was R.W. and his father who took him on his first duck-hunting trip.

In 1967, R.W. received a phone call from a Columbia Heights citizen. The man's father was dying and his son was on his way to Vietnam. Could R.W. do anything to have the son return to Minnesota?

Asked if he ever thought twice about seeking a favor from the vice president, R.W. said, "I had Hubert's direct number. You could do things like that then."

A decorated Marine who fought in the South Pacific during World War II, R.W. returned to the University of Minnesota, for law school. He had previously earned a business degree, but said, "I couldn't get a job other than being a grease monkey and I thought I could do better than that."

He said he'd never even met a lawyer before entering law school. He graduated in 1947 and became Anoka County attorney three years later. It was a part-time job then, with a staff of three.

"I was 7," Robert M.A. Johnson, known to others as Bob or M.A., said of his dad. "I have no consciousness of him not being a county attorney."

Perhaps, neither did R.W. Mike Freeman said that his father twice tried to appoint R.W. to the Supreme Court. Each time, R.W. declined, saying his passion was with Anoka County, Freeman said recently.

In other words, a tough act to follow.

"I never had any real thought of following him," M.A. said. "I have a great deal of respect for him, but I've always been very independent of my father."

M.A. is now considered the dean of county attorneys, Freeman said. M.A. is highly regarded nationally, having served as president and chairman of the board of the National District Attorneys Association.

But the day after his last University of Minnesota Law School final in 1968, M.A. came to the county attorney's office, to work for his father with no clerking experience. By his own admission, he was "a lost soul."

"Here's the file, there's the courtroom, good luck," he would be told by others in the office as he began an on-the-job training that lasted 3 1/2 years -- until he moved to a local law firm.

"This was an alternative that wouldn't be open forever," the younger Johnson said. "I enjoyed working for Dad."

For the next eight years, they worked together, often arguing -- with the son certain to this day that his father and mentor "could not be convinced of my point of view."

His father chuckled when reminded of their disagreements.

"He has a mind of his own," R.W. said. "We'd argue and we'd get things done. The other attorneys we had could never quite figure that out. They never argued with me at all. I was the law."

"I argued a lot," M.A. recalled, "and he taught me so much about criminal law, county boards, to think deeper about the work we do with this office."

"All the people we deal with are not bad people," M.A. said his father insisted. "They are fundamentally good people who have done something wrong."

In 1970, approximately 100 cases were prosecuted through the Anoka County attorney's office, M.A. said. In 2006, there were 1,800 cases. A county attorney's office that once had three lawyers now has more than 40, and a staff of 100.

Through the changes, R.W.'s philosophy remains.

"What is justice?" M.A. asked recently. "In a sense, it cannot be defined. It comes from inside people. It's the people who shape justice.

"R.W. shaped me, I have to think."

Freeman warns that two years is a long time to think and he said he can't imagine the day a Johnson won't be running the Anoka County attorney's office. Brad Johnson, M.A.'s son and a Hennepin County prosecutor, might one day run for the Anoka County office. But he, too, finds it hard to imagine his dad doing something else.

M.A. is more a manager than anything else these days. He said he doesn't remember the last trial he worked himself. He meets regularly with other lawyers in the office, such as Paul Young and Bryan Lindberg, having no problem relegating authority.

"Dad set the pattern for the office," M.A. said. "He paid attention to managing the office. Make the office a place you would want to work with. It's not just a county office, it's part of the county family."

In recent years, M.A. has nurtured "this fascination with farming and with lumber." He and his wife, Donna, talk fondly of the rural property they own in Michigan.

"Things change," said Charlotte Johnson, R.W.'s wife and M.A.'s mother. "Look how this community has grown. It's been very nice to have been a member of the county attorney's family and experience it all. With us, it's all about family."