johnson was the longest serving public member of the mayo foundation board of trustees, serving from 1967 to 1990 and acting as one-time chairman. mayo honored johnson for his contributions in 1991 during the groundbreaking ceremonies of the $26-million-dollar state-of-the-art s.c. johnson medical research center on the mayo clinic's campus in scottsdale, arizona. in 2004, the year of his death, johnson, his family, and the s.c. johnson fund donated more than $12 million to the establishment of mayo's samuel c. johnson program in the genomics of addiction.