My Birth Announcement

Coming Home for the First Time

 

This is my mom carrying me from the car to the house for the first time. My dad was taking the video. 1955

Exciting News!

 
My first book has launched!
By-Gosh Johnson and the Long Walk: 
The Story of John A Johnson.

  https://a.co/d/0djCJEQw  

In 1868, Johan’s dreams of building a life on the family farm in Byarum, Sweden, have slipped beyond his reach. With little future ahead except conscription or a hard life as a hired farmhand, he faces an unbearable choice: remain in the only home he has ever known or risk everything for the promise of America.

Leaving behind the familiar countryside of rural Sweden, Johan begins a journey marked by optimism, heartbreak, hope, and unexpected joy. Thousands of miles from home, he must navigate the hardships of settling in a new land alone.

A sweeping story of courage, family, and the immigrant dream, this novel reminds us that sometimes the life we find is greater than the one we imagined.

 

Dibbens Drive-In, Garden City, Kansas

 

 

This is my grandmother, Frances Dibbens, and one of her nieces in front of her drive-in restaurant on the far east edge of Garden City, Kansas. This photo was taken in the mid 1950's. Dibbens Drive-in sat in the middle of the divided highway, next to the skating rink. Many of us got to serve as curb-hops in the summer. I just followed my older cousins around as I was quite a bit younger. That ended the first time a customer handed me the tip!

I remember her fixing cherry limeades with a little plastic animal (giraffe or monkey) to hold the cherry, and of course, chocolate Cokes! 400's were milk with strawberry syrup.

Grandma lived in a farmhouse to the north of the highway; just across from the restaurant on a sheep farm.

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.