Everything was changing for Skye Johnson Althoff.
In September she got married. And two weeks ago she quit her job with plans to become a housewife.
“They were planning on saving up some money so they could have babies,” said her mother, Dondee Johnson-Erwin. “Then this happened.”
Early Saturday morning, Althoff went into distress while at the Stone Mountain home she shared with her husband, Jay. She was rushed to DeKalb Medical Hillandale, where doctors discovered an aneurysm in her brain had ruptured, said Johnson-Erwin, of Lawrenceville. Skye Marie Johnson Althoff was pronounced dead Sunday, days shy of marking three months since her wedding. She was 22.
A 2008 graduate of Parkview High School, Althoff had loved music since she was a small child, her mother said. She also wanted to be a dancer but had no formal training. The fine arts department at Parkview, and specifically the dance program, was a dream come true for her, said Bridgett Williams, her former high school dance teacher. It was there that Althoff was able to find her niche: choreography.
“Skye was definitely an artist,” said Williams, of Stone Mountain. “She was a feeler, in that she moved how and what she felt. She created movement.”
Even after graduation, Althoff returned to Parkview to volunteer as a choreographer in the dance program.
“She knew she couldn’t perform the moves like she wanted to see them performed, so she asked me if she could use my dancers to execute what she came up with,” Williams said. “At the same time she was teaching her choreography, she was learning the technical terms for what she was teaching. Her ability to teach and learn at the same time is one of the things that made her unique.”
After high school Althoff took classes at Georgia Gwinnett College, but she left to look for something that suited her artistic spirit, her mother said.
“She never let that dance go,” she said. “She would have done it all day every day if she could have.”
The only thing that made her happier than dance was her husband. The couple met by chance in September 2011 while visiting Panama City, Fla. They fell in love and were married a year later.
“I’ve never seen her happier in her 22 years than the day she got married,” said her father, Ricky Johnson of Powder Springs.
Jay Althoff said his wife brought out the best in him and tried to do the same for everyone she met.
“We used to call her the fixer of broken toys,” he said. “If she met someone who was broken or was in need, she wanted to fix the situation.”
In addition to her husband, mother and father, Althoff is survived by her stepmother, Gina Johnson, stepbrothers Will Smith and Jake Smith, and a stepsister, Becca Smith, all of Powder Springs; and grandfather Ray Johnson of Kennesaw.
About the Author
