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!”)
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!"
