Tippy Johnson belonged on the short list of all-time Lynn high school athletes

Word has reached the North Shore that Lorne “Tippy” Johnson Jr. has died.Ask anyone who played sports in and around Lynn in the 1950s and they?ll tell you Tippy Johnson was the real deal. He was a truly, truly gifted three-sport athlete (baseball, football, hockey) for Lynn English who was mentioned in the same breath as Harry Agganis, Boley Dancewicz, Mecca Smiarowski, Jim Hegan, and other members of the Lynn athletic elite. He would probably be on any one?s list of Top 10 all-time high school athletes, not only in just Lynn, but perhaps all over the North Shore. And it?s a pretty safe bet that next to Bobby Carpenter, he may have been the area?s premier hockey player, period.A member of the English Hall of Fame, Johnson led the Bulldogs to back-to-back state hockey championships in 1956 and 1957. And like Carpenter 30 years later, Johnson was the subject of a major feature in Sports Illustrated, where he was identified as a surefire professional.The magazine called him a true “rink rat,” who did everything from play hockey at the old North Shore Arena on Boston Street to scrape the ice surface after hours and lug water tanks karound to spray theh surface.In August of the year he turned 16, Johnson attended a tryout held by the Boston Bruins for young hockey professionals in Greater Boston, and ended up going to the team?s junior training camp in Galt, Ontario n one of only two U.S. skaters to achieve that honor.?This kid,” said Lynn Patrick, who was the manager/coach for the Bruins in 1956, “is positively the best young player I?ve seen on ice in New England ? Matter of fact, I?ll stack him up against the best kids I?ve seen in Canada.”Patrick was impressed not only with Johnson?s physical abilities, but with his natural instincts.?For instance,” Patrick said, “this kid, when he’s in a scoring position, always and instinctively has his stick on the ice. You look, sometimes, at a big league game, big league players. You’ll see some of them with their sticks waist-high. This Tippy?he’s a pro already. You won’t catch him with his head down.”Johnson came by his talent naturally. His father, Lorne “Moose” Johnson, was also a hockey player, and skated for Lynn Classical?s 1928 championship team.Young Tippy took up hockey when he was six years old. While still in the Pee Wees, Johnson went to the Midwest three times for national competitions, and in 1953, in Duluth, Minn., he won out as the best skater present from all over the country, according to the Sports Illustrated article.He impressed the Bruins at their junior camp (Patrick said he could have gone to any one of a number of schools, and would have gladly offered him a scholarship to attend), but came back to Lynn when it was over because he was too young to play for the Toronto Amateur Team (he had to 17).So instead, the right winger came back to Lynn, played for Harold “Red” Foote at English, and helped the team win two state titles.While it was expected that he?d pursue hockey upon graduation from English, he signed a contract to play for the Milwaukee Braves instead. He had been an all-scholastic baseball player for English as well as the state?s leading scorer in football in 1956, with 155 points.Johnson did play some minor league ball in the Braves organization, but never advanced past that. He spent his remaining years in Florida, far from the city where he flourished as a high school phenom.