Jim Johnston





Jim Johnston (JJ, or Double J) was owner of the Seattle Sabres, an original DNFL franchise, which later became the Parma Press under Double J's Seattle general manager, Mark Valentino.

Double J loved sports, and was the sports editor of the DePaulia; later he became sports editor of the Frankfort-Mokena Star.

He also liked fine clothes (he worked for Gingiss for a while and could tell what brand of tie you were wearing from across the room), fine women (his girlfriend was Colleen Molloy), and fine cars (such as his red, turbocharged Mitsubishi). So everyone was stunned by his apparently out-of character decision to become a Roman Catholic priest. Yet he did well in that role, and served the Chicago Archdiocese as Director of Vocations for a while. Bigger things looked to be in store for him in the church hierarchy.

Double J was always in shape (played basketball, coached basketball, played golf), so even more shocking was his death from heart failure in 1994 at age 34. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin himself presided over the funeral Mass, and wept openly at the loss to the Roman Catholic community of this intelligent, educated, and personable priest.

In the DNFL, the Jim Johnston Memorial Wang Award is named for him.. He made the Hall of Fame in 1994 and again in 2000 with Mark Kelly as part of the "Prick Bloc," and again in 2005 for a 1978 resolution about Kelly, and was honored with Remembrance of the Year in 1995