He later went into practice for himself, is now a partner in the Bluffton-based Johnson Davis firm and has represented an array of prominent construction companies, banks and developers. But Johnson spent that summer with Fraser focused on more common labor — devising navigational aids, buying the lumber and crafting his signs. Johnson even took post-hole diggers into the field to plant them himself.

“Everything you do in life can be useful to you if you’ll look at it that way,” said Johnson, whose first job was at a Beaufort bicycle shop the summer after his sixth-grade year. “I’ve done a lot of hard work. “A lot of Harvard guys have not.” Not that Johnson is knocking his alma mater. The son of Lamar Johnson, a Clemson Extension Center agent of national renown, graduated cum laude from Harvard in 1968 with a bachelor’s degree in government. He applied to only one other Ivy League school, Princeton. He wasn’t accepted. Now, he is glad of it.

“That’s because I came to really appreciate the Harvard experience,” Johnson said. “I don’t think Princeton could have replicated it.” Johnson said his reverence for the Crimson was born in the Beaufort County Library, when it was still housed in the Carnegie Building on Craven Street. He read virtually every book in the stacks, including a set that fictionalized the history of Ivy League football. “That was fascinating to me, that they had a mixture of the academics and the athletics,” said Johnson, who played football and basketball and ran track at Beaufort High School.

His love of reading was nurtured by his mother, Gwendolyn. She spent 35 years as an English teacher in public schools and taught her son elements of speed reading that helped him devour texts quickly. Johnson’s reading, in turn, kindled other interests. However, as with his fascination with Harvard, he was not satisfied to simply read about those interests. Johnson has been chairman of the Beaufort County Democratic Party, a U.S. Army reservist and associate pastor of the non-denominational Bible Faith Fellowship Church. Health problems and the need to focus on his law practice forced Johnson from the pulpit in 2011, however, religion remains central to his life — he said he has read the Bible in its entirety at least 20 times and prays many times each day.

His wife, Kerry, is an author, with fiction, non-fiction and children’s titles to her credit. They have been married 32 years and have four children — two of their own and two from Johnson’s first marriage. At one time, Johnson’s firm was South Carolina’s third-largest in terms of staff attorneys and owned two airplanes to fly them around the country. With his Harvard pedigree and a national client list, he could have set up his practice anywhere in the country, like his college roommates.

Two are attorneys in Washington, D.C. A third practices at his family’s Philadelphia firm, which is one of the oldest family-run practices in the country. One Harvard classmate helped design the Baltimore Aquarium, another was Air Force secretary under Bill Clinton and yet another is one of the nation’s preeminent tax lawyers and general counsel to the IRS. “But I wouldn’t trade a day with them,” said Johnson, who has traveled extensively but always taken his mail in the county where he has lived since age 4. “That’s because I live in Beaufort County and there’s no place more beautiful.”