BERNE — Phyllis E. Johnson — a vibrant, committed, intelligent woman — threw herself into helping others. And, for the last years of her life, the Hilltown community of Berne benefited from her work.

She was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer this spring and sought treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. She died on Friday, Nov. 24, 2017 in her home at the top of Smith Lane with her good friends by her side. She was 69.

Ms. Johnson had done so much for Berne that the supervisor declared July 22 Phyllis Johnson Day. She was too ill to attend the celebratory gathering in the town park. “It’s like they held my funeral before I died,” she said with a chuckle a few days afterward.

Councilwoman Karen Schimmer, who helped organize the event, called Johnson “a free spirit who turned the ordinary into the extraordinary.” She also wrote afterward of Phyllis Johnson Day, “It was a heartening tribute to a woman of substance, a woman who supported us in times of need, made us laugh, and boggled our minds with her unique approach to life.”

Helderberg Lutheran Pastor Wendy Cook said Johnson’s energy put the Energizer Bunny to shame. Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara presented a citation lauding her service as “a commissioner of the Town of Berne Fire District, a member of the Helderberg Senior Service Board, Helderberg Ambulance, Friends of the Library, and the author of a senior column in The Altamont Enterprise.” She was also a devoted member of the East Berne Fire Department.

Mildred Zuk held a coffee pot as she stood before the crowd and explained that Ms. Johnson helped at the Berne Reformed Church NEAT meals, serving coffee. NEAT, she said, used to stand for Not Eating Alone Tonight but now stands for Neighbors Eating And Talking. Alan Zuk said Ms. Johnson also served coffee at the firehouse dinners and “wouldn’t stop talking.” He said, too, that she “never stopped learning,” taking classes as a firefighter and ambulance squad member.

Mary Alice Molgard, chairwoman of the Berne Fire Commissioners, praised Johnson’s “wicked sense of humor” and said she was “flat out the smartest person I have ever met.” From the Berne Public Library, Judy Petrosillo described Ms. Johnson as a book lover and Kathy Stemple described her as a philosopher.

Phyllis Johnson was born on April 2, 1948 in Syracuse, New York, the only child of Lois W. (née Moody) and Calvin W. Johnson. She lived in Syracuse for most of her childhood, Ms. Johnson told The Enterprise in an April podcast, with “a couple of stints” living with her aunt in Auburn, New York when her father was ill and her mother was overwhelmed.

Her father, who suffered from asthma and emphysema, was a clerk at city hall and her mother worked the evening shift at a semiconductor plant. This left Ms. Johnson on her own for an hour-and-a-half after school each day, until her father got home. Her mother gave her two bus tokens every morning. After school, she’d ride a bus to the end of the line and then ride back to the corner by her home.

“This worked beautifully until one time I got off at a restaurant,” Ms. Johnson recalled. “I ordered an ice cream sundae.” She didn’t have the 35 cents to pay for the illicit treat. Her father picked her up and paid, and he “explained getting off the bus was not the world’s best idea.”

Ms. Johnson concluded her story, “Everything new is exciting.”

As a girl, she had a belief that carried her through life: “I could do anything.”

Ms. Johnson said that it was not until she was a teenager that she picked up from the culture “what girls were supposed to do.” Girls at her high school were supposed to take home economics. “I was outraged I couldn’t take shop,” she recalled.

Ms. Johnson also said she had been out of high school and on her own since she was 16. She credited her “natural inclination and circumstances” with making her independent.

She came to the Capital District in the 1970s to work for the New York State Coalition for Health and Welfare, which, she said, created policy “to make life better for the poverty community.” Not knowing the area, she ended up renting an old farmhouse in Duanesburg. “That was my first experience living on a farm,” she said, marveling at sweet corn out the back door.

Although she then moved to the city of Albany, she said she “had fallen in love with the country.” Ms. Johnson “moved to beautiful downtown South Berne in the early 1980s,” she said, and lived there until 1996 “when I ran away to New Orleans for close to 10 years.”

There, she described herself as “the token white girl in an employment program for low-income people.” She said, “Everyone else was black; I could be the liaison with white, older male businessmen.”

She then became the community relations director for the New Orleans Public Library. Ms. Johnson had always loved books and had a button that read, “My idea of heaven is a library with dim-sum service.”

At that time, she also volunteered for the Red Cross and helped with disasters, including Hurricane Danny, which hit Louisiana in July 1997. She was then hired by the Red Cross to run its first-ever statewide conference, Ms. Johnson said. She continued her work as a Red Cross volunteer for decades, helping with disasters, as a field services manager, in such far-flung places as

When Ms. Johnson left New Orleans, she returned to the Hilltowns and picked up where she’d left off with her volunteer work, adding still more causes to contribute to.

Mildred Zuk recalled this week how Ms. Johnson became an emergency medical technician and was “involved in getting the Helderberg Ambulance to run by itself.” When she returned from New Orleans, Ms. Zuk said, “She found her new love — the fire department … She was our compliance officer to make sure everyone was compliant with certifications.” She also said, “Phyllis just loved to learn. She was always taking classes.”

Judy Petrosillo, who manages the Berne library, agreed that Ms. Johnson loved to learn. “She called herself a bibliophile,” said Ms. Petrosillo. “It absolutely killed her to have any book thrown out, no matter what shape it was in.”

Ms. Petrosillo also said, “You never knew where her conversation was going to because she was so well read on so many topics … She was a great library supporter. She worked with the Friends of the Library on fundraisers. She had great ideas.”

Ms. Johnson was at the library “at least weekly,” Ms. Petrosillo said, and she ordered “a very eclectic” selection of books from across the library system. Ms. Johnson often gave books as gifts, and would borrow them from the library to read them first “to make sure they were appropriate for that person.”

One such book recipient was Ms. Johnson’s dear friend and neighbor, Mary Alice Molgard. Ms. Molgard, who teaches at The College of Saint Rose, just this week read students in her Film Noir class passages from a book Ms. Johnson had given her, defining terms of the genre. “It’s a fun little book — the perfect gift for me,” said Ms. Molgard.

The friends had common interests, in film and music, in literature and art, Ms. Molgard said. “She was so well read, she could talk to you about any subject. She could quote things out of the blue — from Shakespeare to contemporary film.

“She was a very generous person with her time and her talents,” Ms. Molgard continued. “She was happy to share intimate knowledge of a project you were working on. She would do whatever she could to help you get to your goal.”

The two worked together on many projects for the fire district. “She was a whiz at finding the right documents,” said Ms. Molgard. “She didn’t expect anything in return.”

Describing her friend’s personality as “really nice,” Ms. Molgard added, “She had a gruff exterior — a little bit loud, a little bit pushy. That endeared her to me.”

Among her closest friends were Judd and Melissa Worden and their daughter, Sarah Stonesifer, and her husband, Matt, who live nearby and helped tend to her throughout her illness.

“We’ve been fast friends since she showed up in Berne,” said Ms. Worden. “She spent holidays at our house. She was part of our family.”

Ms. Johnson was always eager to learn new things — “She always wanted to know everything about anything,” said Ms. Worden — and, true to her high school dismissal of gender stereotypes, in her later years she learned how to shoot, Ms. Worden said, and wanted to use a chain saw, too, but the Wordens kindly talked her out of that pursuit.

“She was a good soul,” said Ms. Worden. “She gave and gave and never really asked for anything in return … When she gave to an organization, she had a family.”

Ms. Worden said of her friend’s dealing with cancer, “She was fighting … She always said, ‘Don’t pull any punches.’ They said, ‘You’re dying.’ … None of the treatments were working. There was nothing more they could do.”

Ms. Worden is now looking for good homes for Ms. Johnson’s five cats as she had promised her friend she would. Ms. Johnson loved her cats like children, Ms. Worden said. “They were like a security blanket. They weren’t going to turn on her. They were loyal. They would always be there for her.”

Ms. Worden recalled how, when Ms. Johnson had married Mike Malec, a fellow first responder from Berne, the bride had carried, instead of a bouquet, a cat down the aisle.

Her daughter served as the flower girl but, instead of carrying flowers, Ms. Johnson had Sarah carry a stuffed cat. When it came time for the bride to throw her bouquet, Ms. Johnson and Sarah pulled off a planned-ahead switch — stuffed cat traded for real cat — leaving the wedding witnesses temporarily taken aback as the bride hurled her “cat” in the air.

“She was unique,” Ms. Worden concluded of her friend.

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Phyllis Evalyn Johnson is survived by her good friends, Suzanne and John Delong, Melissa and Judd Worden, and Matt and Sarah Stonesifer as well as by several distant cousins.

A celebration of Phyllis Johnson’s life will be held on Sunday, Dec. 17, at the Berne firehouse, at 30 Canaday Hill Road in Berne, from 2 to 4 p.m.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer