The son of Maya Angelou, Author Guy Johnson has died at 77 years old in California. He was the only child of the late, great Maya Angelou.
Maya Angelou posted the news to Facebook on Wednesday, Feb. 16th.
In the post she said, “Mr. Guy Johnson passed away peacefully at his home this morning in Oakland, California, Arrangements will be made and announced in the coming days.”
Angelou gave birth to Johnson when she was a teenager. Guy Johnson was involved in a car accident in his early years. According to reports he was visiting Kenya with his mother Maya Angelou. The accident damaged him causing calcium deposits on his spinal cord.
The accident also weighed on Johnson’s outlook on life.
Angelou once recalled a conversation she had with him, in which he asked her to let him go if needed as he said:
“Mother, I refuse to live a talking head… I have to ask you something no one should ever ask a mother. If there’s no chance of recovery, I have to ask you to pull the plug and let me go.”
“Guy Johnson is a wonder,” Angelou is quoted as saying of her son in an interview with the Associated Press. “He’s been physically challenged. He was paralyzed from his neck down at one point. The doctors had told me, ‘Your son, he will never move again, he will never walk again.’ I said, ‘My son will walk out of this hospital.’”
He eventually would.
The two had a very close relationship. She once said on OWN’s Super Soul Sunday that “My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son.” And Johnson was an author like his mother, writing a number of books including Standing at the Scratch Line. When he was asked at one time what it was like growing up in the “shadow” of his beloved parent, he replied, “I didn’t. I grew up in her light. Sometimes I wasn’t worthy of it, but it has always been an experience that expanded me.”
Guy Johnson was the father of Maya Angelou’s grandson, Colin Ashanti Murphy-Johnson.
