NARROWSBURG, NY — Grace Johansen, who had a long relationship with The River Reporter as an employee and columnist, passed away on August 8 at the age of 86.

Johansen was an advertising manager with the newspaper, and she also provided the column “Did You Know?” She had a deep interest in local history, which prompted her to found the Tusten Historical Society; she served as the organization’s president for 20 years.

She also wrote various books and booklets about the region. In 2003, Johansen penned a booklet that delineated a walking tour of Narrowsburg, and she was involved in the town receiving the memorial plaque in front of town hall that marks the Town of Tusten’s Sesquicentennial celebration, commemorating its 150 years of incorporation.

Johansen also worked with other community activists to found the local library. Information on the website of the Western Sullivan Public Library (WSPL) says, “In the late 1980s, Grace Johansen, long-time Tusten supporter and area resident, imagined a library in a town where there had never been one. The result of that vision produced the Tusten-Cochecton Reading Center in a small storefront on Main Street, Narrowsburg, NY. Largely through the determination of community members, the Reading Center became an accredited public library in 1990, moving into its new home gifted by Art and Beth Peck.”

The library ultimately merged with two others to become WSPL.

More recently, Johansen was a member of a local Crones Club, celebrating senior women and harkening back to a time when elder women, instead of too often being the target of discrimination as happens now, were viewed as sources of wisdom, law, healing and moral leadership.

In 2010, the crones, who were comprised of Johansen and seven other women, gathered with more than 40 younger women for what Sandy Long, writing in The River Reporter, called, “an inspiring and spirited discussion of their remarkable lives and a generous offering of hard-won insights.

“‘Everything changes,’ said one. ‘Acceptance and fortitude will get you through.’ ‘Limitations will come, but keep on going,’ advised another. ‘Ask yourself what is most important to accomplish within your lifetime and focus on that one thing,’ offered a third.”

Johansen was born in 1929, at the beginning of the Great Depression. Johansen’s family owned and operated the popular Peggy Runway Lodge, which was located in Atco, PA, just across the Upper Delaware River from Narrowsburg.

Although it burned down in 1979, Peggy Runway Lodge has joined many other images from the past that have appeared in Johansen’s column in The River Reporter. From snowstorms near the turn of the last century, to the construction of Route 97, to young people decked in swimming attire in the 1920s, Johansen treated readers to a parade of pictures that highlighted the rich history of the region.

Kristin White, director of WSPL said she was very gracious and will be greatly missed. She said one of her colleagues told her “She lived up to her name.”