The son of a U.S. Navy Warrant Officer, he grew up in Hawaii. He attended the inauguration of John F Kennedy as a member of the Boy Scout honor guard, received an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy from the same president, and survived an interview with Admiral Hyman Rickover, who asked him if he was one of the Naval Academy Beatles because his hair was longer. He passed his interview, and upon his graduation in 1967 in the top 10% of his class, he was accepted to the Navy's Nuclear Power Program and Submarine School. When he was 14, he went on his first date with Bonnie. They spent the next 62 years together, getting married upon graduation in the Naval Academy chapel. In eight years as a submarine officer in the Navy, he completed five patrols on ballistic missile submarines, first on the USS Francis Scott Key SSBN-657 (Blue) as Reactor Controls Officer, Radar/Sonar Officer and Damage Control Assistant, then on the USS John C Calhoun SSBN-630 (Blue) as the Engineer Officer. After leaving the Navy in 1975, he and his family moved to Arlington, TX, where he served the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Region IV, rising to Director of Reactor Safety and Projects.

In 1979, he took advantage of an opportunity and took the family overseas for two years to Paris, France, and served as a U.S. Government liaison to the Nuclear Safety Division of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). He left government service in 1987, and the family moved to Atlanta, GA, where he worked for a short time at the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) in Evaluations and Assistance. He then went into private consulting in the nuclear energy industry, eventually creating his own firm. He retired in 2012. Surviving are his wife, Bonnie Ellis Johnson; two sons, Scott Johnson and his wife, Laura of Kennesaw, GA, and James Johnson, currently living in Brussels, Belgium with his wife, Debbie, and youngest daughter, Adrian. Eric's grandson, James and Debbie's son, Drew Johnson, lives with his wife, Corrin in Palmerston North, New Zealand. His other granddaughter, James and Debbie's oldest daughter, Ansley, lives with her fiancé, Joe Hadley in Monee, IL.