Grant Douglas Johnson

This photo is of Mark Johnson, Mazel Johnson, and baby Grant Douglas Johnson in Tropic, Utah. Taken from "For Our God, Our Country and Our Children" section: "Our Family" by Grant Johnson as told to Lorraine Johnson On November 11, 1918, World War I came to an end. On Nov. 14 at Tropic, Utah, a son was born to Joseph Hills and Mabel Watson Johnson. Because the LDS Church had a new Prophet and President by the name of Heber J. Grant, they chose the name of Grant Douglas for their new son. I was born at home with a midwife, Mrs. Riding, attending. Other members of the family at the time were brothers Mark Watson Johnson (5 years, 5 months older) and Mazel Kay Johnson (2 years 2 months older). We lived in Tropic, Utah, population about 600, in the southwest part of town across the street from Grandma Johnson. Grandfather Johnson had died when Father was about 15 years old, and Grandma later married Grandfather’s brother, David Johnson. One of my first memories was of going over to Grandma’s and there having Uncle David tell me I was a baby of peace and would never see war. I don’t remember much more about Uncle David except he wasn’t healthy so he went back to Arizona. When I was about four years old, Aunt Mary, Mother’s sister from Glendale, Utah came to visit us. On Sunday she helped us get ready and sent us to Sunday School. As we were walking home from church, Aunt Mary came up the street running and acting so happy. As she got close she called, “You have a baby sister!” This was Metta. Some years later I remember Aunt Mary again being with us. I was over to Grandmother’s working in her garden. Grandma had at least one-half block, two gardens and two orchards. This time Aunt Mary came over to tell me we had another brother. Sheldon had joined the family. The next time she came to stay, I was cutting popcorn and putting it in piles when she came to tell me we had another sister, Gladys. She was the youngest, so now we had all our family!

This photo is of Mabel Watson Johnson (wife of Joseph Hills Johnson, Jr.) and their first four children: L-R Grant, b. 14 Nov, 1918, Mark, b. 12 June, 1913, Metta, b. 18 Feb, 1923 and Mazel, b 13 August, 1915, in front of their family barn in Tropic, Utah. This story is by Grant Johnson, as told to his wife, Lorraine Mason Johnson Our Ranch: Days of Summer Glory! My early years were spent at our ranch in the summer. We had 160 acres two miles from town against the park line of Bryce Canyon National Park. We had a one-room log cabin with a loft for us children to sleep in. Dad built a large room onto it, also of logs, but they were sawed flat. It had a very small room between the two. I remember how happy we were to a have such a nice home. We had a small stream of water that we collected in a reservoir. This became a swimming pool for most of the town. We had a large garden and maybe one-fourth of the ranch was planted to dry land corn. I have memories of my two older brothers and me cutting and hauling corn to town to our other home. Most of the winter I would shuck corn after school. We even had a corn sheller that was fun to use. We raised lots of vegetables and often I would gather some of them along with butter, milk, eggs and cheese, then get on my horse, ride up the canyon on the horse trail to Bryce Canyon camp site, then I would go from camp to camp selling the produce. I think we made at least $20.00 a year this way. I like this quote that describes my early life: “If you are born and raised on a farm, you develop a basic integrity that stays with you all your life. The cows must be milked. If you plant corn you will raise corn. A farmer cannot be dishonest.” – Robert Schuller In the fall, Mother would meet me after school about half way to the ranch and we would pick up pine nuts. It seems as if our store room always had a hundred pounds of pine nuts, along with dried apples and corn. I filled my pocket with pine nuts each day when I went to school. If my two uncles who were in high school saw me, they would tip me upside down, shake the pine nuts out and then take them away from me! One of my jobs when we lived at the ranch was to take the cows to the pasture each day. I had a horse named Old Belle who was really smart. If a stray cow got into our herd, she immediately realized it shouldn’t be there and would chase it off; or if the cows got to lagging, she would bite them on the tail and make them take off. I could just relax and almost go to sleep knowing that she would take the cows home. I also had a dog named Socks who was a Fox Terrier. The pasture where he took the cows was about one half mile long. When it was time to go home, I would tell Socks to round up the cattle and he would get them rounded up and started home for me. In the late summer I enjoyed riding a horse up to Bryce Canyon to pick elder elderberries. I can still see Mother cooking them, then putting them into a cloth sack and hanging the sack from the warming oven on the stove to drain all the juice out to make jelly. In August during dog days we picked the bllberries which grew on the ranch. They were red berries about the size of a small pea. The only trouble was that during the dog days the rattlesnakes were starting to shed their skins and could not see, so they would strike at anything they heard, and the billberry patch was always a likely place for them. We would throw rocks into the bushes, then watch and listen before we would pick. I have many happy memories of life on the farm and of doing fun things like playing in the hills, gathering isinglass to make marbles. We would heat the rocks, then pound them up into a powder, mix with water and roll it into round marbles, then bake them until they were hard. I also gathered different colored rocks, made them into a fine powder and put it into small bottles – a layer of each color, then pushed a small stick into the bottle to mix the colors enough to make pictures. I told of our days on the ranch, but of course we moved into town for the winter. Our home in town was a frame house which Dad had added to several times. We had a large kitchen and living room, and four bedrooms. One of these was later made into a bathroom. We were one of the first families in town to have an inside bathroom. The only heat we had was a stove in the front room and the kitchen stove. Our lot was the same size as most other lots in town – one-fourth of the block. We had plenty of room for a large barn, chicken coop and a two story granary with a dirt cellar underneath it. We had two large garden lots – one for corn, and the other for all the other vegetables. The rest of the lot was in fruit trees. There were about ten sour cherries, six large apricots, two plums, one prune, three kinds of pears and 15 or 20 apple trees. In the fall it was a big job to pick the apples and carry them down into the cellar. There were three large bins for apples and one small one for winter pears. They were always heaping full for winter. One of my after-school jobs was to bring wood in and fill the wood boxes with cedar wood for the kitchen and pine for the living room stove. It would take several small wagon or sleigh loads for each. Then I was to get a pan and fill it with at least three kinds of apples for us to eat in the evenings – mostly Peramines [Note: This apple obtains a red striped skin when mature, with an upside-down shape. Flesh is a deeper pink tone which varies with climatic changes. Tart and aromatic flavor. Ed.]. There were two jobs I never did like to do, though I did them anyway. One was to pick raspberries, the other, picking pie cherries. It took too long to get a bucket full. We had a game when we were young called “ante-I-over”. Strange name, now that I think of it, and I have no idea how it would be spelled, or if it ever was. We would get a few kids together. Part of them would be on one side of the house and part on the other. We threw the ball over the house. The kids on the other side would catch it and throw it back. Socks, my little dog, enjoyed playing this game with us; sometimes he would catch the ball in his mouth as it came over the roof. Finally I found that he and I could play and game together. I would say, “Socks, let’s play ante-I-over; he would immediately run to the other side of the house. When I threw the ball over the house, he caught it in his mouth and brought it around to me, then ran back to the other side ready to catch it as I threw it again. There was a wash (a deep ditch) along the road to Tropic which had a little water in it. In the winter there was ice all the way for at least five miles above Tropic. Dad would take us up with our sleds, and since it was downhill we would come shooting down all the way home. What a ride! After we got our bicycles we would go up the road about ten miles, and we would really get going down the road. We lived in an ideal place for fun, and scenery both. I remember our first car – a model T Ford, and how proud we were, since we were among the first in town to have a car. There were two places, going to the ranch, where the model T couldn’t climb, so we would all get out and push, or Dad would turn around and back up. It had more power backing up than going forward. During the winter we shucked the corn we had raised at the ranch. We used it to feed the animals. We could shell the ears by taking a corn cob and rubbing the cob over the kernels to make them fall off. Some of the corn we ground up with large hand mill; some we used to make hominy. I always helped Mother with this. We boiled the corn in lye water until it was soft, then ran water over it for an hour, all the while grabbing hands full and rubbing until all the hulls came off. I remember how Mother praised me as being the only one who could find all the chickens’ nests and get the eggs. In July I could have part of the eggs to sell, so I could have money to spend for the Fourth and Twenty-Fourth. These were fun days when the entire population in town came to the Square to have all kinds of races and games. I had about fifty cents to spend on fire crackers, hamburgers (which were 10 cents), ice cream, etc. Winter brought lots of snow to Tropic; many times we had four feet. We made skis from barrel staves and we would ski off the hills around town. We also made a place on the hill to have sleigh rides. Sometimes the snow would freeze and we could walk or ride our sleighs on top of the snow. That was really fun. One winter we had a cow with a young calf and were keeping her across the street at Grandmother’s place. I went over one morning to milk the cow and feed the calf some milk, but couldn’t find the calf. I hunted for her until the snow began to get soft, then I heard it bawl half way up to hill. It had got out during the night by walking on top of the snow, then as the snow warmed a little it sank in. What a job it was to carry that calf through the snow back to its mother! When I was a little older, we didn’t always go to the ranch in the summer. Around the 15th on June was hay cutting times, so we always worried whether we would get the hay up in time to get fishing on the East Fork when the season opened. One of the first times my folks let me go fishing I got Norm Ott to go with me, along with Mark, Mazel and some cousins. Norm couldn’t go unless his mother went with him, as he would get up and walk in his sleep, so she went along and at night she would tie a string to his big toe and over to her tow so she would wake up if he started to get up. It must have been awful for Norm, the way we teased him about it. In those days we could catch sixty fish a day. That was the limit. They must have been really small as we would put them into a gallon can with a layer of fish, and a layer of salt. Our fishing poles were the longest and straightest willows we could find. One day I kept after my folks to let me go fishing with my cousin, Vee Johnson. Finally Dad said we could go if we would go to the ranch first and find the work horses. Of the 160 acres on the ranch, about 100 were trees. We looked everywhere and couldn’t find them. Finally we decided to kneel down and pray about it. When we got up we looked through some oaks not over 100 yards away and there the horses stood. It made believers out of us! School Days My school years started out to be lots of fun, but in the second grade at mid-year they passed me to the third grade, so I had two grades in one year. It separated me from my playmates and it was bad for me as I was small for my age, so I was much smaller than the new classmates. The school was small, so there were plenty of opportunities and I was in everything: plays, basketball and tennis. Norm Ott and I took the school championship in tennis. The last two years of school I played basketball and we played all the schools from Tropic to Marysvale and most of the time we got beat quite easily. We would make the trip in a pick up truck with a box over the back, and the floor covered with straw and lots of quilts. In our senior year there were five in our class – three girls and two boys, who were Norm and myself. I was the secretary and Vee Johnson was to have been school president, but he was tragically killed in a car accident that summer. At graduation time I was chosen to give the valedictory speech. I remember a school board member from Panguitch was the main speaker. He had a jar of beans with a few walnuts in them and when he shook the jar the walnuts came to the top. When I got up to talk I said it looked like the biggest nuts always made it to the top, so there was an advantage in being a nut! In the fall of 1939, Dee Henderson and I went to Logan to attend college. We stayed in one room with kitchen privileges. I can still remember how cold it was walking up that hill for an eight a.m. English class. School was hard for me, but I really enjoyed it. I took ROTC, English, speech and a shop class, as I thought I would be a cabinet maker.

[The following story was recounted by Metta Johnson George in a telephone conversation to Karl and Linda Johnson, on Sunday, 4 March 2007. Our conversation with Metta came about because of a family reunion two years earlier when Metta and Gladys (my Dad’s sisters) shared their memories about Dad’s illness and recovery. An excerpt from my journal entry from 2005 reads: “Last week on Friday, 8 July we went up to “Johnson Hills Camp” for a Joseph & Mabel Johnson family reunion. I can’t do justice to that experience in one or two paragraphs… The reunion was a great experience. There were many people there who I had not seen for 20-25 years. It was great to visit with some of the cousins and to catch up on their lives somewhat. The most touching and enjoyable thing for me was talking with the older generation and hearing their stories and reminiscences. We talked with Gladys and John about their experiences in China teaching English. We talked with Metta and Gladys about some of their memories of my Dad.” Here is Metta’s recollection of my father’s illness and recovery. She said that he was about 18 which places these events about 1936 or 1937.] Your dad and I were best of friends in our childhood. He was my hero. Whenever we played games he always chose me to be on his team. I adored him and we grew up lovingly together. When I was 14 and he was 18, he became very, very ill. Grant was smart in school and they double promoted him one year. He graduated from high school when he was very young. He went up to Logan to go to school and he stayed until Christmas and he came home and was dreadfully homesick. And he came home and we had three teachers that we were boarding and rooming. Mr. Jepson, the school music teacher, was sick and we found out later that he was the carrier of spinal meningitis. That’s probably where Grant contracted it. Grant came down with a terrible, terrible headache. Mother called it a sick headache and she warned us to walk very quietly across the floor. She had him installed in the back bedroom but just any jarring would make him cry out with pain. He was in terrible pain and his head was pulled back. He couldn’t put his chin to his chest. We had the doctor from the CC camp in Henryville come and he didn’t know what it was. The doctor from Panguitch didn’t know how to diagnose it either and Grant just kept getting worse. Finally one morning he felt like there was a paralysis starting in his feet. We didn’t have a car that time, Dad had sold ours and Mazel was bringing us one from Detroit on his way back from serving in the Eastern States mission. Dad had bought the car and Mazel was just going to pick it up. But our good neighbor, Malen Meacham, offered to take him to the hospital in Cedar City. They took off that morning. By the time they got to Cedar City, Grant was completely paralyzed and unconscious. The doctor, Dr. McFarland, was the best specialist we knew. He looked at him and he felt sure it was spinal meningitis but to make sure, he tapped his spine and drained the liquid from his spine and flew to Salt Lake City that night to find out and had it tested. In the meantime, he told Mother and Dad to stay in the room and watch him. They were quarantined in the room with him the whole time he was in hospital. Dr. McFarland said that there was no chance of him, or hardly any chance of him, living through the night. Mother and Dad didn’t want to accept that kind of a prognosis and so they prayed for him. The next morning Dr. McFarland returned with the diagnosis of spinal meningitis. They drained the fluid from his spine twelve times after they diagnosed him in an attempt to heal him. They did everything they knew how to do to save him but he didn’t improve. This went on for several days and the doctors kept telling Mother and Dad that he would not live. Mother would not give up, she just wouldn’t give up on her boy. Grant was always the most loving son and a great help to them. She kept praying and asking the Lord to heal him. Mother and Dad administered to him. Mother participated in many blessings as in those days they did that if there was no-one else around. She said to my Dad, “I can’t give him up, I just can’t.” My father kept saying, “Mother, we need to turn this over to the Lord and say “Thy will be done.” This went on for three of four days and then, Mother agreed that she would turn it over to the Lord and they prayed to the Lord and said, “We want Grant to stay, but if it is Thy will to take him then, Thy will be done.” From the time this prayer was offered, he began to heal slowly. Before this he remained so ill that they didn’t think he could possibly live. It was not until they humbled themselves to accept the Lord’s will and said, “They will be done.” They gave him large doses of sulphur drugs and he broke out in large hives the size of a 50 cent piece because he was allergic to the drugs. They discovered that he was blind and the doctors said that if he lived he wouldn’t be able to see. At the time, if a person ever recovered from spinal meningitis they suffered from blindness. After they started treating him, he could move a little but they tested his eye-sight and he was blind. But mother wouldn’t give up on her boy. She had great faith, they both had great faith and they both felt sure that he would fully recover. I think he was in the hospital about 10 or 14 days and my parents were quarantined with him. It felt like a long time to me. Gladys stayed with Grandma Johnson and Sheldon and I were responsible for milking 5 or 6 cows. I was fourteen and Sheldon was twelve. During this time Mazel came home from his mission and he was a great help. He went to the hospital, but he could only wave through the window at them. When Grant came home, Dad carried him from the car like a baby. You normally can’t do that with an 18 year-old boy but he had lost so much weight and he was so weak and thin. Mother sat him down by the big window in our house and as I walked by he said, “I can see a shadow.” You see if there was sunlight he could see a shadow. That was all he could see but he kept improving. Soon after Grant came home, Sheldon came down with the measles. In those days you were quarantined if you had measles. Mother was very worried about what would happen to Grant because he hadn’t had measles and we were afraid that it would really make him blind. She isolated us in a big room upstairs in our house. It was a winter I’ll never forget. We were quarantined and we were taking care of two boarders until school was out. Mother would come upstairs and take care of us and then she changed and went downstairs to take care of Grant. Then she would change again and come upstairs and take care of us and then, when she went downstairs, she changed to take care of Grant. She was very worried that having seen his life spared from spinal meningitis she might lose him to measles. She was also worried that having seen some improvement in his sight he would become blind. . Many people went blind from measles in those days. Gladys and I also got the measles that was about as sick as I ever was. I remember one day, Mother told me to sit on the chair while she changed the sheets on the bed. I sat up on the chair and then I toppled off the chair and fainted. That’s the only time that ever happened. When Mazel saw me he said, “My heavens Metta, you’re the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen,” because my eyes were so swollen closed. He helped to keep us cheerful. So you see how terrible it would have been if Grant had caught this. This was really hard on mother but she did a remarkable job taking care of all of us and keeping Grant away from the measles. Maybe about a month after he came home, the bishop of our ward, Bishop Ott, died. While Grant was in the hospital, the whole town held a fast and prayed for Grant’s recovery. This happened a couple of times. We had about 300 or 400 hundred people in one ward in our small town of Tropic. Grant wanted to go to Bishop Otts funeral. When he got home he cried he was so tired and sore because so many people had shaken hand with him and patted his back. They were so grateful that he was able to come home. His sight and his strength came back gradually and after 6 months he was well enough that he went on a mission. It was a miracle. Mother was working so hard because there were the three of us and our boarders to take care of. Mazel came home from his mission and he took Grant back to Dr. McFarland for his check-up after 6 weeks. When he took him into the doctors office the doctor could see that Grant could see and everything. He said to Mazel, “I want you to take a good look at your brother. He is a living miracle.” He said, “I could not have saved his life. It took a greater power than mine to save this boy.” It was a miracle, the first miracle I had ever seen. The whole thing was a miracle and we all knew he was alive because of it.

Taken from "The Rest of the Story" personal history by Grant D. Johnson, as told to Lorraine M. Johnson CHURCH SERVICE When I was a deacon, I served as Deacon’s Quorum President and also served a mission. After we came home after going to Watchmaking school, I was Sunday School Superintendent for a few years with Sherrel Riddle and Chester Jones as counselors. Later I was president of the Elders Quorum, then served as one of the Seven President of the Seventies, and finally as the General President of the Seventies Quorum, About 1952, I was called to be the First Counselor in the Bishopric with Pershing Nelson as Bishop and A.J. Hutchings as Second Counselor. Pershing was a well-known attorney, and A.J. was a dentist. Pershing had never been very active in the church – just attended now and then, so he didn’t know much about the procedures of the church. He very often turned to me in the meeting and said, “What do we do now?” Bishop’s meetings were interesting. We could be in the middle of the serious discussion and A.J., who never seemed to have his mind on what we were doing, would turn to me and say something like: “Do you know where I can get some real butter?” A.J. was an alcoholic, but he wasn’t the type who drank all the time. He just went on a binge ever few months, and in between he “reformed: and didn’t drink at all. Once he went on a binge when his wife was out of town so I went down to try and take care of him. I took some soup Lorraine had made for him. He willingly gave me all his bottles and I emptied them down the sink. The next morning I went to check on him, but found that he was worse off than when I left the night before. He said, “Ha, ha, Grant – I had another bottle hid!” In spite of this problem, he was really a good person in between binges… very generous and hard working. We had a ward farm when we were in the Bishopric and it was truly a burden. There was always irrigation to be done, beets to be planted, thinned and hoed, hay to be mowed, ranked and stacked. The worst job was the broom straw which grew on tall plants that looked like corn. Instead of corn cobs, these plants grew tufts of straw used for making brooms. The plants were scratchy, and pulling off the corn was a chore. We did get extremely good support from the members of the ward to help pick though. Everyone would come and bring all their children, as the young ones could carry the broom straw and help put it into piles. One day Lynda got caught under a barbed wire fence in the middle of a red ant bed. She started screaming and I came running; I got there so fast, she didn’t suffer from too many ant bites. De-seeding the broom straw was a terrible job. Each bunch had to be held over a rotating drum with spikes in it to pull the seeds out. I came home with chaff and stickers in all parts of my clothing. Washing wouldn’t take it all out, and we would have to pick it out by hand. Much of it never did come out. We did make good money and were able to pay off the indebtedness of the farm. Each Christmas the Bishopric made visits to the poorer families in the ward and took food and toys to them. One year we went to visit a family whose home was only partly built. They had a fireplace but it wasn’t completed and it had no screen so the ashes were scattered out to the middle of the room. The rest of the house was a disaster. When we went in, the Mother of the home was making Christmas candy – coconut balls, rolling them into balls with her hands. She insisted that Pershing and I each have one. We had the best attorney in Washington County, Pershing, pleading our case that we didn’t want to take one – we wanted to leave them for the children, but she still insisted so we had to accept them. We suddenly remembered that we must leave immediately to attend to some urgent business. It was very careless of us, but as we stepped across the ditch, we just happened to drop them. We laughed about that incident many times in the ensuing years. One day a couple went up to see Pershing about a family squabble. He was plowing his garden, and just continued to work, so they followed him up and down the rows explaining the problem. This was in the days when milk came in quart bottles; it was pasteurized but not homogenized so the cream raised to the top. She said he had poured out the cream on his cereal leaving mostly skim milk for the rest of the family. He insisted he shook of the bottle first and as he defended himself, he demonstrated y tipping an imaginary bottle up and down. I can’t imagine how Pershing settled the problem! The first of the year after we were put in, Pershing wrote a letter to all members explaining why we needed the budget paid as that was how the church was run, etc., and gave an estimate of what each should pay. About a week later he received a letter from a brother written in poor English and spelling, in pencil, and stating if that was the way the church was run he would have to drop out of the church as he could not afford to pay that kind of money. The Bishop was really shook up, so he wrote a letter – two pages legal size, explaining to him that it wasn’t necessary for him to pay. It was written mostly in legal terminology. He brought it up to the store for me to read and sign my name with his. After reading it I started to laugh. He asked me what was funny. I said, “Pershing, I don’t even understand what you’ve said. How do you expect this poor old brother to understand it?” He went back to his office and wrote a short letter telling him we wanted him in the church and his donations weren’t necessary. The brother continued to come to church. About a year after we were released from the Bishopric, A.J. and his wife were both killed in a car wreck. A big truck ran into them just north of Cove Fort; I spoke at his funeral. In 1962, Pershing died of cancer and I also spoke at his funeral. After our release from the Bishopric we built a home in the First Ward and I was asked to be the Aaronic Priesthood Secretary. Each year we took the boys to Disneyland. One year when we reached Las Vegas, one of the boys said, “This is the farthest I’ve ever been away from home.” I had arranged for them to stay in a second class hotel to keep the costs down. It was the first time most of the boys had been in the big city or ridden in elevators. One day we took them to Pershing Square which has a parking lot three stories underground with escalators. They were so fascinated with riding them that the police finally came and tried to herd them off. We spent one day at the beach. They had never seen the ocean before but it didn’t take long until they had learned to go way out into the ocean and ride the waves in. The next day we went to Disneyland and that was a real hassle trying to keep track of about thirty boys. We were supposed to meet a Snow White’s Castle at a certain time, and everyone was there except Lynn. After hunting for an hour or two, I went out to the car and there was Lynn sitting in the car reading – completely unconcerned. Even today one fellow still tells me what a wonderful time he had on that trip. After five years in the First Ward we were moved back to the Second Ward by a division of the wards. Here I was made Priest Advisor and again we took the boys to Disneyland. Nothing unusual happened on this trip except Bishop Kay Wilkinson was so afraid of getting lost that he tailgated us all the way to Los Angeles and back. At one time I asked Richard Jensen why he was driving so fast; he said, “The Bishop is driving to close, I’m just trying to keep out of his way.” On this trip we slept on lawns of private homes in sleeping bags. During these years when I was Priest Quorum Advisor, we had a swimming pool in our back yard, and also a “Swirl Machine.” This was a machine which would freeze fruit juice almost instantly into a concoction smoother than ice cream. It was a perfect set-up for parties and we had a lot of them. I had a great group of boys, I really tried to make the lessons interesting for them and almost all of them went on missions. I later served about five years on the High Council. This was an interesting position. I enjoyed knowing what was going on in the Stake, and also giving talks at the wards, as I became well acquainted with most of the members of each ward. I didn’t enjoy the High Council Courts where we had to question people who were up for excommunication. After I was released from the High Council, I served as a Counselor in the High Priests Presidency with Earl Wood as President and Pedro Temple, who was originally from the Philippines, as the other councilor. I was very active in Scouting for a number of years, acting as District Chairman for two years and as an Assistant Scout Master for quite a long period. We took the boys on many scout trips – usually to Lost Camp on Cedar Mountain and to Snow’s Canyon for the Camporees. I started taking Karl with me to camp when he was two or three years old. I took the camper so we were comfortable. When we went to Lost Camp the Scouts would fight to see who got to carry him. I t was quite an experience dealing with that many boys. One day Fred Booth and I were getting things ready to come home; we fixed breakfast – eggs, hotcakes and bacon. Allen Carter was always hungry, so the scouts decided to see if they could fill him up, and they fed him another 15 hot cakes. Everyone had to clean themselves up good before leaving, so thy usually washed in the creek. Allen was on KP so he wanted to use the dish water to wash with as it was warm and the creek water was extremely cold. We always came away with more than our share of trophies. We spent a lot of time and effort helping the boys fill requirements for merit badges. Lynn and Karl were each about thirteen years old when they achieved the rank of Eagle Scout. We were living in the First Ward when Lynn received his. He was the first Scout to earn his Eagle in many years in that ward. It is a tremendous amount of work to qualify for an Eagle Award and we were proud of our boys for achieving it. In addition to the positions mentions, I have been a Home Teacher for about forty years. Highlights of Church Service...I Remember When... My brother-in-law, John Palmer had a law office just a few doors down from my store. Occasionally he would take a break and visit me for a few minutes in the store. One day he came in with a problem and wanted my advice. He had been asked to take a position on the High Council, but didn’t really want to do it, and wondered what I thought he should do. I told him I thought it was a great opportunity and a compliment to the family so he accepted it. Two weeks later, I made an appointment with him at his office. When I walked in I told him I had a serious problem I needed to discuss with him. He looked rather worried as he cautiously asked me what it was. I said, “Well, I’ve been asked to take a position on the High Council. What do you think I should do?” He laughed and laughed, and you can just imagine the advice he had for me. ********** One Sunday morning we were sitting in High Council meeting deep in discussion of matters concerning the Stake. All of a sudden John said, “I would like to ask Richard Jensen a question.” He was given permission so he said, “Richard, do you have another pair of shoes at home like the ones you have on?” Richard quickly glanced at his shoes and then explained why he was wearing one brown shoe and one black. “When you have feet as long as mine, you buy several pairs of shoes when you find some that fit, and it wasn’t very light in the bedroom when I was getting dressed this morning!” ********** On a Saturday evening just before a Stake Conference, Elder Bruce R. McConkie, a member of the Twelve Apostles, held a meeting with all the High Council members in our area. He had a list of names which he would look at – then he would call on someone to answer a question. At one point he looked at the list then said, “Brother Lindsay – who runs the Church?” I happened to be sitting by Doug Lindsay so I whispered, “Tell him it’s the Relief Society.” Doug stood up and said, “Brother Johnson here, said to tell you it’s the Relief Society.” In all seriousness Brother McConkie answered, in the slow voice he always used, “We know that – but we’re trying to change it.”

Taken from "For Our God, Our Country and Our Children: One man's personal history of World War II" by Grant Douglas Johnson, page 10 Missionary Days “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the son and of the Holy Ghost.” Matthew 28:19 In the fall of 1940 I received a letter from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Elder Grant Johnson, and I was only a Priest at the time, so I wouldn’t open the letter for a week or so. It was a call to a mission to the Central States. No one had even asked me if I wanted to go, and I wasn’t sure I did. In due time, Dad and Mother took me to Salt Lake City, got me clothes, glasses and everything I needed. I entered the Mission Home for about ten days, and I began to feel the missionary spirit. The next two years were happy ones. I don’t know whether I did any good, but it was good for me. After a few weeks out I was told to go out into the country and preside over a funeral. I took a new missionary with me. Neither of us had hardly ever been to a funeral, so I think I was as scared as I’ve ever been. It didn’t help that the funeral was for a 19 year old girl. There were about one hundred people there, but only the family of the girl who had died were members of the Church. I guess we did it right, but we almost forgot to dedicate the grave. It was a tremendous responsibility and I was really happy when it was over! Most of my time was spent in Tulsa, Okmogee and Cofeyville, Kansas, and Independence, Missouri. At one time I had to speak in Church each Sunday in two towns and part of the time some of the same people were at both places. I really had to do a lot of reading and preparing. Altogether I had a lot of good experiences as a missionary. I performed about six baptisms and two weddings. One of the weddings was for a former District President, Lester Hansen, after he was released.

[This memory was taken from a Christmas card written by Gladys in December 2015 to Karl & Linda Johnson.] I’m thinking of one of my best Christmases—Grant was just home from his mission. He fixed a limb of a pine tree to a board base & we cut orange gumdrops and stuck them on the needles. It was so special. Just for me by my bed. [The following memories were taken from a letter written about 15 January 2016 by Gladys to Karl Johnson.] My memories are only in small flashes. I’ve always wondered how Juanita Brooks could write such a full, complete memory of her life. Maybe her many brothers & sisters helped fill in spots and add to her memory. Grant was so special to me. Mother told me many times how my big brothers would jockey for the chance to carry me around, especially to Church. Mark & Hannah married when I was just turning one so I guess Mazel and Grant were often care takers of me. I was very cross at Mark when Arcola was born (3 years) because those boys had told me he would no longer care about me since he had a girl of his own. I took out my spite by kicking his shins. I knew I could always get Grant to read the funny papers to me if Dad wasn’t available. He [Dad] was first on the list because he didn’t read silly words in like butcher knife. That was Grant’s favorite to get my goat. He would tell me when to laugh and did I get it. He was always saying I was too English and didn’t get the joke—my reply was I got it, but it wasn’t funny. He was such a support to Mother. He was the one to wash dishes, sweep the kitchen, wash up after milking—the milk separator was always a big job. I also remember him filling the water holders on the kitchen stove. He would also cook specialties like melted cheese and scrambled eggs. He would always wash & I would dry. That meant he did all of it to clean up, wash, put away. He was the one to make me a tire swing and put it up. I was so broken hearted when he left to go to Utah State. I was having a birthday party and cried so much Mother made me go to my room because I was being so rude to my guests. I loved when he milked the cows. The cats & I would line up & he would squirt milk into our mouths or maybe on our faces. So many fun things to do. When we went to Salt Lake to get him from his mission we went to the train station & Mother didn’t have a dime for the restroom door so I crawled under & opened the door. I was the first to see him as he stepped off the train. Again when he was at Nellis in Vegas I was the first to see him waiting at the guard post. Mother said that was because he was my Grant. When he was on his mission he sent us 2 pages out of a hymn book, “In the Garden” and “The Old Rugged Cross.” I believe it was from Coffeyville, Kansas. Both songs were used at our home but “In the Garden” was used many times at Church and funerals, such as Dad and Arcola sang it at her grandpa Shumway’s funeral. Hanna was gone to see Mark at San Diego so we took the children to Tropic for the funeral. Karl, nothing special—just day by day life of a family. Much love to you, Gladys

This photo is of Mark Johnson, Mazel Johnson, and baby Grant Douglas Johnson in Tropic, Utah. Taken from "For Our God, Our Country and Our Children" section: "Our Family" by Grant Johnson as told to Lorraine Johnson On November 11, 1918, World War I came to an end. On Nov. 14 at Tropic, Utah, a son was born to Joseph Hills and Mabel Watson Johnson. Because the LDS Church had a new Prophet and President by the name of Heber J. Grant, they chose the name of Grant Douglas for their new son. I was born at home with a midwife, Mrs. Riding, attending. Other members of the family at the time were brothers Mark Watson Johnson (5 years, 5 months older) and Mazel Kay Johnson (2 years 2 months older). We lived in Tropic, Utah, population about 600, in the southwest part of town across the street from Grandma Johnson. Grandfather Johnson had died when Father was about 15 years old, and Grandma later married Grandfather’s brother, David Johnson. One of my first memories was of going over to Grandma’s and there having Uncle David tell me I was a baby of peace and would never see war. I don’t remember much more about Uncle David except he wasn’t healthy so he went back to Arizona. When I was about four years old, Aunt Mary, Mother’s sister from Glendale, Utah came to visit us. On Sunday she helped us get ready and sent us to Sunday School. As we were walking home from church, Aunt Mary came up the street running and acting so happy. As she got close she called, “You have a baby sister!” This was Metta. Some years later I remember Aunt Mary again being with us. I was over to Grandmother’s working in her garden. Grandma had at least one-half block, two gardens and two orchards. This time Aunt Mary came over to tell me we had another brother. Sheldon had joined the family. The next time she came to stay, I was cutting popcorn and putting it in piles when she came to tell me we had another sister, Gladys. She was the youngest, so now we had all our family!

This photo is of Mabel Watson Johnson (wife of Joseph Hills Johnson, Jr.) and their first four children: L-R Grant, b. 14 Nov, 1918, Mark, b. 12 June, 1913, Metta, b. 18 Feb, 1923 and Mazel, b 13 August, 1915, in front of their family barn in Tropic, Utah. This story is by Grant Johnson, as told to his wife, Lorraine Mason Johnson Our Ranch: Days of Summer Glory! My early years were spent at our ranch in the summer. We had 160 acres two miles from town against the park line of Bryce Canyon National Park. We had a one-room log cabin with a loft for us children to sleep in. Dad built a large room onto it, also of logs, but they were sawed flat. It had a very small room between the two. I remember how happy we were to a have such a nice home. We had a small stream of water that we collected in a reservoir. This became a swimming pool for most of the town. We had a large garden and maybe one-fourth of the ranch was planted to dry land corn. I have memories of my two older brothers and me cutting and hauling corn to town to our other home. Most of the winter I would shuck corn after school. We even had a corn sheller that was fun to use. We raised lots of vegetables and often I would gather some of them along with butter, milk, eggs and cheese, then get on my horse, ride up the canyon on the horse trail to Bryce Canyon camp site, then I would go from camp to camp selling the produce. I think we made at least $20.00 a year this way. I like this quote that describes my early life: “If you are born and raised on a farm, you develop a basic integrity that stays with you all your life. The cows must be milked. If you plant corn you will raise corn. A farmer cannot be dishonest.” – Robert Schuller In the fall, Mother would meet me after school about half way to the ranch and we would pick up pine nuts. It seems as if our store room always had a hundred pounds of pine nuts, along with dried apples and corn. I filled my pocket with pine nuts each day when I went to school. If my two uncles who were in high school saw me, they would tip me upside down, shake the pine nuts out and then take them away from me! One of my jobs when we lived at the ranch was to take the cows to the pasture each day. I had a horse named Old Belle who was really smart. If a stray cow got into our herd, she immediately realized it shouldn’t be there and would chase it off; or if the cows got to lagging, she would bite them on the tail and make them take off. I could just relax and almost go to sleep knowing that she would take the cows home. I also had a dog named Socks who was a Fox Terrier. The pasture where he took the cows was about one half mile long. When it was time to go home, I would tell Socks to round up the cattle and he would get them rounded up and started home for me. In the late summer I enjoyed riding a horse up to Bryce Canyon to pick elder elderberries. I can still see Mother cooking them, then putting them into a cloth sack and hanging the sack from the warming oven on the stove to drain all the juice out to make jelly. In August during dog days we picked the bllberries which grew on the ranch. They were red berries about the size of a small pea. The only trouble was that during the dog days the rattlesnakes were starting to shed their skins and could not see, so they would strike at anything they heard, and the billberry patch was always a likely place for them. We would throw rocks into the bushes, then watch and listen before we would pick. I have many happy memories of life on the farm and of doing fun things like playing in the hills, gathering isinglass to make marbles. We would heat the rocks, then pound them up into a powder, mix with water and roll it into round marbles, then bake them until they were hard. I also gathered different colored rocks, made them into a fine powder and put it into small bottles – a layer of each color, then pushed a small stick into the bottle to mix the colors enough to make pictures. I told of our days on the ranch, but of course we moved into town for the winter. Our home in town was a frame house which Dad had added to several times. We had a large kitchen and living room, and four bedrooms. One of these was later made into a bathroom. We were one of the first families in town to have an inside bathroom. The only heat we had was a stove in the front room and the kitchen stove. Our lot was the same size as most other lots in town – one-fourth of the block. We had plenty of room for a large barn, chicken coop and a two story granary with a dirt cellar underneath it. We had two large garden lots – one for corn, and the other for all the other vegetables. The rest of the lot was in fruit trees. There were about ten sour cherries, six large apricots, two plums, one prune, three kinds of pears and 15 or 20 apple trees. In the fall it was a big job to pick the apples and carry them down into the cellar. There were three large bins for apples and one small one for winter pears. They were always heaping full for winter. One of my after-school jobs was to bring wood in and fill the wood boxes with cedar wood for the kitchen and pine for the living room stove. It would take several small wagon or sleigh loads for each. Then I was to get a pan and fill it with at least three kinds of apples for us to eat in the evenings – mostly Peramines [Note: This apple obtains a red striped skin when mature, with an upside-down shape. Flesh is a deeper pink tone which varies with climatic changes. Tart and aromatic flavor. Ed.]. There were two jobs I never did like to do, though I did them anyway. One was to pick raspberries, the other, picking pie cherries. It took too long to get a bucket full. We had a game when we were young called “ante-I-over”. Strange name, now that I think of it, and I have no idea how it would be spelled, or if it ever was. We would get a few kids together. Part of them would be on one side of the house and part on the other. We threw the ball over the house. The kids on the other side would catch it and throw it back. Socks, my little dog, enjoyed playing this game with us; sometimes he would catch the ball in his mouth as it came over the roof. Finally I found that he and I could play and game together. I would say, “Socks, let’s play ante-I-over; he would immediately run to the other side of the house. When I threw the ball over the house, he caught it in his mouth and brought it around to me, then ran back to the other side ready to catch it as I threw it again. There was a wash (a deep ditch) along the road to Tropic which had a little water in it. In the winter there was ice all the way for at least five miles above Tropic. Dad would take us up with our sleds, and since it was downhill we would come shooting down all the way home. What a ride! After we got our bicycles we would go up the road about ten miles, and we would really get going down the road. We lived in an ideal place for fun, and scenery both. I remember our first car – a model T Ford, and how proud we were, since we were among the first in town to have a car. There were two places, going to the ranch, where the model T couldn’t climb, so we would all get out and push, or Dad would turn around and back up. It had more power backing up than going forward. During the winter we shucked the corn we had raised at the ranch. We used it to feed the animals. We could shell the ears by taking a corn cob and rubbing the cob over the kernels to make them fall off. Some of the corn we ground up with large hand mill; some we used to make hominy. I always helped Mother with this. We boiled the corn in lye water until it was soft, then ran water over it for an hour, all the while grabbing hands full and rubbing until all the hulls came off. I remember how Mother praised me as being the only one who could find all the chickens’ nests and get the eggs. In July I could have part of the eggs to sell, so I could have money to spend for the Fourth and Twenty-Fourth. These were fun days when the entire population in town came to the Square to have all kinds of races and games. I had about fifty cents to spend on fire crackers, hamburgers (which were 10 cents), ice cream, etc. Winter brought lots of snow to Tropic; many times we had four feet. We made skis from barrel staves and we would ski off the hills around town. We also made a place on the hill to have sleigh rides. Sometimes the snow would freeze and we could walk or ride our sleighs on top of the snow. That was really fun. One winter we had a cow with a young calf and were keeping her across the street at Grandmother’s place. I went over one morning to milk the cow and feed the calf some milk, but couldn’t find the calf. I hunted for her until the snow began to get soft, then I heard it bawl half way up to hill. It had got out during the night by walking on top of the snow, then as the snow warmed a little it sank in. What a job it was to carry that calf through the snow back to its mother! When I was a little older, we didn’t always go to the ranch in the summer. Around the 15th on June was hay cutting times, so we always worried whether we would get the hay up in time to get fishing on the East Fork when the season opened. One of the first times my folks let me go fishing I got Norm Ott to go with me, along with Mark, Mazel and some cousins. Norm couldn’t go unless his mother went with him, as he would get up and walk in his sleep, so she went along and at night she would tie a string to his big toe and over to her tow so she would wake up if he started to get up. It must have been awful for Norm, the way we teased him about it. In those days we could catch sixty fish a day. That was the limit. They must have been really small as we would put them into a gallon can with a layer of fish, and a layer of salt. Our fishing poles were the longest and straightest willows we could find. One day I kept after my folks to let me go fishing with my cousin, Vee Johnson. Finally Dad said we could go if we would go to the ranch first and find the work horses. Of the 160 acres on the ranch, about 100 were trees. We looked everywhere and couldn’t find them. Finally we decided to kneel down and pray about it. When we got up we looked through some oaks not over 100 yards away and there the horses stood. It made believers out of us! School Days My school years started out to be lots of fun, but in the second grade at mid-year they passed me to the third grade, so I had two grades in one year. It separated me from my playmates and it was bad for me as I was small for my age, so I was much smaller than the new classmates. The school was small, so there were plenty of opportunities and I was in everything: plays, basketball and tennis. Norm Ott and I took the school championship in tennis. The last two years of school I played basketball and we played all the schools from Tropic to Marysvale and most of the time we got beat quite easily. We would make the trip in a pick up truck with a box over the back, and the floor covered with straw and lots of quilts. In our senior year there were five in our class – three girls and two boys, who were Norm and myself. I was the secretary and Vee Johnson was to have been school president, but he was tragically killed in a car accident that summer. At graduation time I was chosen to give the valedictory speech. I remember a school board member from Panguitch was the main speaker. He had a jar of beans with a few walnuts in them and when he shook the jar the walnuts came to the top. When I got up to talk I said it looked like the biggest nuts always made it to the top, so there was an advantage in being a nut! In the fall of 1939, Dee Henderson and I went to Logan to attend college. We stayed in one room with kitchen privileges. I can still remember how cold it was walking up that hill for an eight a.m. English class. School was hard for me, but I really enjoyed it. I took ROTC, English, speech and a shop class, as I thought I would be a cabinet maker.