Helen Johnson Hornberger (1925-2024) By Shari Edwards

 

Helen Johnson Hornberger was my aunt. She usually introduced me to her friends as "the oldest daughter of her oldest brother." I've known her all my life, but after I retired, I had the opportunity to spend quality time with her weekly. As the family historian, I might have had a few selfish motives, such as gleaning every story and fact I could about her and the rest of our family. Her stories and her answers to my many questions, interwoven with bits of her life, captivated me over lunch, coffee, or an old photo album.

 

Helen was born in a Model T Ford in the parking lot of the McPherson hospital. Every great person needs a great beginning!

 

She told me about the time the Christmas tree caught fire, riding her bike down the row of asparagus to keep it from growing (she didn’t realize my dad just used scissors), about the many beautiful fruit trees on their farm that died during the Dust Bowl and drought years, and the snake she found while gathering eggs that caused her to have a lasting fear and got her out of that chore for good!

 

As a girl, she began attending the New Gottland Covenant Church with a friend, eventually leading her two older brothers and then the rest of the family to the church. She loved music of all kinds. We enjoyed singing together during many music programs at Regent Park. Last fall, Aunt Helen began singing the hymn, “I Need Thee Every Hour,” that she thought she’d learned as a girl. When she was restless, I’d hear her singing parts of the line, “Bless me now my Savior, I come to Thee.” Sometimes trailing off to “Bless me, help me.”

 

Although Helen was an excellent student, when she started high school in McPherson, she told me that as a farm girl, she never felt quite as good as the city girls. But after graduation, she moved to Wichita, landed a factory job as a parts clerk at Beech Aircraft Co., and within a few short years, became Olive Ann Beech's personal secretary. I'm sure she surprised herself many times! (I wish you could have heard her dramatize her funniest conversations with Mrs. Beech! I can still hear her say, “Miss Johnson!”)

 

As an artist, she could look at a tin can and see a flower. She developed methods for
creating realistic metal flowers that could fool a botanist from a few feet away. When I asked her how it all began, she shrugged and said, "It was hot one summer, and I wanted something to work on in the cool basement." You’d never guess that she had taught hundreds of people her techniques, written a book about it, had arrangements at the Smithsonian and the Sedgwick County Historical Museum! She taught several of her nieces and nephews the basics of making metal flowers, in the basement of the Hillcrest. Sadly, what looked effortless when she demonstrated was anything but! Nevertheless, we all enjoyed the time together.

 

Sometimes, I would bring her pages from the novel I was writing about her grandpa and the Johnson family. She became a literary critic as she read, looking up occasionally with a comment, "It might have happened that way," or "Dad would have used stronger language than that!" I have many more memories to write about later.

 

This weekend, I made a list of the values that seemed to be the very essence of my aunt: generosity, creativity, lifelong learning, humor, perseverance and grit, humility, and encouragement.

 

I saved a voicemail message she left me once after I brought her a chapter of my book. Even though I’m not good at hearing things like “you have a real imagination for dialogue” and “it was wonderful,” about my own writing, because I see the faults first, it was a great encouragement to keep writing. 

 

Aunt Helen wasn't as comfortable receiving compliments as she was giving them. When met with admiration in the last few years, she would battle her self-consciousness with humor and a little sarcasm, using a favorite catchphrase: "Well, ain't I the one?" And to that, I would say, "Well, yes, you are!"

Patricia Ann (Martinson) Johnson - Aunt Patty

 Aunt Patty, my Uncle LeRay's wife, died earlier this month. 

 I am so grateful Brittany and I were able to stop in McPherson to visit Aunt Patty about 3 weeks before she died. She was in great spirits that day and we talked for quite a while. 

I'll miss her phone calls and how she relentlessly pursued answers to my questions about our family history as I wrote my book.

Pastor Daniel Perry, New Gottland Covenant Church in McPherson County, Kansas officiated and gave the best message at her funeral. The day was memorable in that the sanctuary was standing room only and a huge thunderstorm came over during the service and only her immediate family braved the 60 mph winds and rain at the New Gottland Lutheran Cemetery. They came back with a few broken umbrellas and wet clothes but, their positive attitudes were intact, just like Aunt Patty would have liked.

Before I left the church, I asked the pastor if he'd send me the message. 

 

I'll let his own wonderful words tell you about Aunt Patty.

 ***

The Gift of Metal Art Runs in Our Family!

Helen Johnson Hornberger is a gifted artist who works with metal. Her specialty is realistic metal flowers. Helen began experimenting with flower making with tin cans in the 1950s. She even asked her folks to save the cans that their frozen grapefruit juice came in, as the material was soft enough to easily shape. Later, Helen began to use sheets of thin copper for her creations. She enlisted her husband, Dwight, in bending heavy copper wire for stems as she directed him in getting the shape she needed.

 

In her words, “I found myself fully challenged by this new form of craftsmanship and the impossible goal of trying to duplicate the intricate beauty of living flowers. By trial and error, I devised designs that could simulate flower parts and structures in the lightweight metals. I experimented with types of paint, with light and color, to decorate the metal.”

 

As she perfected her craft, she received many requests and commissions for specific flowers and arrangements. She taught classes in tole flower making and, in 1972, published a book titled, The Art of Making Tole Flowers and Ornaments. Although it’s now out of print, you can find a copy at the Wichita Public Library.

 

Eventually, she had the opportunity to create a Fifty State Flowers arrangement for the Smithsonian Institution. Over the years, she made five more sets of the fifty state flowers, some as commissions and others for family members. The Sedgwick County Historical Museum recently acquired the set she kept for herself. That arrangement is awaiting a permanent spot in one of their displays.

 

Most of her friends and family cherish a piece or two of her art, given to them as a holiday or wedding gift. In recent years, she has continued to create metal flowers and has taught Shari, Brad, Dee, and Emily the basics of her craft. Helen has lost count of how many flowers she’s created, in almost seventy years of work, but it’s nearing a thousand!

 

Helen resides in an assisted living facility in Wichita and at 97 years of age, she is still constructing flowers.

 

 

 

 

Our Noisy Fourth of July Treat

Vera Johnson in her dining room in Wichita, Kansas.

A Fourth of July memory that stands out  from my 1960's childhood was of my mom’s noisy kitchen every Independence Day. 

Whether we were having company at our house or traveling to visit family and friends, homemade ice cream was likely going to be a treat. When I was very young, this wasn’t a noisy procedure and, because I was little, I didn’t have to sit and turn the hand crank, which would have made me appreciate the noisy machine. I was allowed to try the hand crank a time or two but if we were to have ice cream, we needed someone with muscles to make it happen. By the time I was in Junior High, Mom had a loud electric ice cream maker running by the kitchen sink before every summer get together.

Mom's recipe changed from time to time, and she experimented with flavors, by adding fresh peaches, or strawberries, or using eggs or no eggs. If she was making a flavored ice cream, it warranted a second batch of vanilla, always my favorite. I could hear the machine running from anywhere inside the house. I’d walk into the kitchen to it loudly rotating its paddles inside the canister. Why was it so loud? It seems all kitchen machines were noisy back then. 

Mom would stand in front of the redwood barrel on the counter with arctic ice water dripping into the sink from a hole on its side. She added crushed ice and rock salt in between the wooden sides and the canister to keep the freezing process moving along. Just like every procedure in her kitchen, she had it down to a science! My sisters and I all knew exactly how high to keep the ice in the barrel, just in case we needed to take over while she performed the multitude of tasks to have everything ready on time. She was great at kitchen timing.   

Making ice cream was even noisier with the constant yelling over the din. Not angry yelling mind you, but necessary planning yelling.

“We need to leave here by 11:00.” Dad might yell. 

“I’ll be ready.” Mom would answer. She was always right.

“Girls, why don’t you get the chairs put around the table?” or 

“Can you look in the second drawer of the hutch for the napkins I bought for today?”

“I think I’ll bring some tomatoes/ cucumbers/ radishes to give away.” Dad would yell above the commotion. 

It was the only time I heard Dad yell.

Suddenly the machine would stop, although the ringing in my ears took a few more moments to find silence. Then the motor would be set aside and carefully, Mom would lift the lid off the canister. She usually had a spoon and plastic bowl ready. A small portion was put into the bowl and if we were lucky, we got to participate in the taste test. One tiny spoonful and she knew if it was done. 

Satisfied, she’d slowly pull the paddles out of the ice cream before she replaced the lid, expertly sealing it with a folded piece of waxed paper. My sisters and I gathered around the bowl and paddles to eat the quickly melting leftovers. Mom tipped the barrel to empty any extra liquid, plugged the hole, and added more ice around the top. She covered the whole thing with old dishtowels or blankets, the insulation needed to get the sweet goodness to a party. 

Dad took over from there, if they would be transporting somewhere else.

When it was finally time to serve, Mom was there, with a big flat serving spoon, to distribute the milky mixture into bowls. I'd sample the other flavors and though delicious, I usually chose vanilla. It was always as good as I expected. My first bite, creamy and icy at the same time, had a rich vanilla flavor. Although Mom usually provided strawberries, blackberries, or blueberries as garnish, I either ate it plain, or topped mine with rivulets of chocolate syrup. I ate without stirring. Unlike some who mixed until theirs was a soupy light brown, I was looking for two distinct flavors in my bowl.

Homemade ice cream has become a rarity. It seldom appears on a summer holiday menu, and it’s been many years since I’ve had an ice cream maker of my own. I'm sure they're quieter now, but I’ll always remember the flavor that was worth the noise.