THE LIFE OF JAMES "LEON" JOHNSTON AND FAMILY

     Leon was born August 9, 1921 in Western Grove, Arkansas to Ross and Maudie Adams Johnston, the oldest of two children.  The first three years of his life the family continued to live around the Western Grove area.  In 1924 Ross moved his family of three along with Maudie's parents and siblings to Big Prairie, Oklahoma, which no longer exists. 
     Around 1930, the families moved on to Ashland, where they joined the Church of God with headquarters in Stanberry, MO. (In 1949 (7th Day) was added to the church name)  In 1933 Leon's dad, Ross, received his ministerial license with the church. Leon was 12 years old and his sister Bernice was 9 years old. 
     I don't know how long they stayed in Ashland, but their next move was to McAlester, Oklahoma, not far from Ashland.  There is a COG7 there but Papa wasn't the pastor. I have school pictures of my dad from both the Ashland and McAlester Elementary Schools. I do not know where else he attended school.  I do know he quit school in the Ninth Grade.  Granny taught him to read at age five.
     The family moved to California for about three years.  Papa did not pastor a church in California either.  I do not even know the name of the town they lived in.  Papa said while living in California he had a lot of heart problems.  He couldn't lift his arms much higher than his shoulders before becoming very dizzy and almost passing out.  He worked for the Curtis family who were members of the COG7 in their nursery. 
     I don't know what year Papa moved the family to Deming, New Mexico to become the pastor of the COG7 there.  Letha's family lived there for about three months, but I am not sure Ross was the pastor then.  Leon was baptized into the church, but I do not know what year.  
     Now we come to the year of 1942.  America was at war with Japan.  All the eligible men were being drafted.  So at 20 years of age, a month before his 21st birthday, Leon enlisted in the Army.  He was stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas for his training. He served as a Private in the motor cade the three years he was in the service.  He was shipped out to Japan to defend the country.  If I have my information correct, the family was living in Clovis, New Mexico at the time. While serving his country in WWII he was stationed in Japan, Germany, The Philippines,  and New Guinea.  Thank God he was not injured.  He received no medals, but received two accommodations with distinction.  He came down with Malaria while in the service.  He was honorable discharged from the Army in 1945 and returned to Fort Bliss, Texas. I do not know where his family was living at the time. He was very sick when he arrived home and for three months, he didn't want to see or talk to anyone.  In 1940 his sister Bernice left home at the age of 16 to Paris, Texas and became Bernice Beech.  She had five girls, all older than Leon's two, at the time.  
     Some time after leaving the Army, Leon moved to San Francisco, Cali-fornia to work for a family, the same family Papa worked for earlier, who was in the church. Meanwhile his parents, sister Bernice and her five daughters moved to Arizona.  The church body at Willcox met in the members homes and didn't have a regular pastor.  Many of the ministers of the church came to hold revivals.  In April of 1949, Leon came to Arizona to ask Evelyn Brunson to marry him and visit his family.  Evelyn had fallen in love with Ted Krigbaum, so she turned him down. He met Letha Hinds who was 17 to his 27 years.  She was friends with his sister Bernice and had been for about a year, but they had never mentioned having a son.  One day Bernice said to her, my brother is coming for a visit, I want you to meet him.  What brother?  They had never mentioned Leon.  
     After my mom's death and received much of her belongings.  My dad's military records and honors and such.  Letters he wrote home from the war.  In those letters he signed his name Leyon.  But in my years of life he always spelled it Leon.  So I am not sure which is correct.  His uncle Archie Craig always called him Lee.  In the military he had to go by his first name James, and they called him Jim.  I went to get a copy of his birth certificate and all it had on there was Johnston, and his birth date 08/09/1921, place of birth Arkansas.  His parents names weren't on there.  I paid for a corrected certificate from the state of Arkansas.  
     Leon and Letha only knew each other three months before marrying.  She didn't even know that the last name was Johnston with a t and not Johnson  as the family let everyone call them until July 21, 1949 in Willcox  He went to sign the marriage licenses and she saw him sign James Leon Johnston.  She turned to him and said, your last name is Johnston?  Why does the family let everyone call them Johnson?  That isn't your name.  Leon and Letha were married in her Aunt Goldie Hinds' kitchen because it was the largest room in their house and the church had met there that day. So I guess after lunch they had  a wedding!  Over the years Leon teased her that their actual wedding date was July 22.  That is the day they had set.  They got married one day earlier on the Sabbath, because Elder Kenneth Walker was in town for a revival and would be leaving on Sunday. 
     Ross and Maudie had moved to Phoenix by this time.  Leon and Letha moved there also.  Their first child, Larry Leon was born in Phoenix, March 28, 1951, a week after his mom's birthday.  They enjoyed going to baseball games while in Phoenix.  The season came to an end with no more games to go to.  Larry would cry, ball bang momma, ball bang. 
     Some time after the birth of Larry,  Leon and Letha moved back to Willcox, but just for a short time.  In September of 1952 they moved to Claremore, Oklahoma.  Ross and Maudie moved to Claremore from Phoenix in February of 1952. Ross became the Pastor of the Claremore Church of God (7th Day).  In December of that year their second child was born, Connie Lynn on December 14, 1952 in Claremore, Oklahoma.  Leon,  Letha and Larry were living in the second half of a duplex on the corner of 10th and Cherokee Streets in Claremore.  Letha's cousin Bill Hinds, wife Lucille and son Chip, lived in the other half. 
     When it came time for Letha to go to the hospital to have Connie, there was snow on the ground and very cold.  Neither Leon and Letha nor Bill and Lucille had a phone.  Leon had been working after sundown and into the night, before taking Letha early in the morning to the hospital.  At that time, the hospital wouldn't even let Leon wait in the lobby.  It was to cold to sit in the their car, so he drove back home, leaving Letha's cousin Lavetta's phone number.  Fred, Lavetta's husband, came to the house and knocked on the door to wake Leon up.  He had to do it three times before Leon woke up enough to drive to the hospital after their daughter was born.  I don't know what year it was, but mom legally changed her name from Letha to Eletha.  The reason for the change was this, her dad named her Letha because he thought he was naming her after his sister in law Minnie Clark Hinds.  Mom just knew he was wrong and it was spelled Eletha.  They were both wrong.  Her name was Aletha.
     Leon had a few jobs before going into business for himself.  He first worked for Spartan Trailers in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  He worked as a plumber, and a carpenter.  He was an auto mechanic by trade.  He began his own auto repair business, which he worked at for many years. Most times jut making ends meet.  Couldn't always afford to rent a garage.   Some times he rented a building in town and some times just worked from his yard.  No phone in the house, but sometimes a phone in the garage.  In 1964 Letha had to go to work outside the home for the first time.  Leon became very sick and couldn't work to support the family.  Their youngest child Marlene was just two years old.  Letha was in a very bad accident that year.  She was driving to work when she was hit from behind at a very high rate of speed of a pick-up hit her from behind and over turned the panel truck.  The police saw the children's toys in the back and kept asking her if she had a child with her.  Marlene was at home.  She had got off on the shoulder to make a turn.  The man behind her moved over to the shoulder also and hit her from behind.
     I don't know all the places around Claremore Letha and Leon lived, but I can name a few.  All rentals.  When I was just a few months old, dad moved us to Mayes County just over the Rogers/Mayes County line.  We lived on a hill.  The Krauses, Frank and Mina and children, lived down the hill from us.  Mom didn't drive and there was no phone.  Dad was working in Claremore and gone into the night.  Mom was afraid of living out there with two young children and no way to get help, except to walk down a long hill to the Krauses.  She finally convinced Leon to move back to town. 
     The next place I remember my mom telling me about was on the right side of Highway 20 in Claremore as you go east to Pryor Creek.  I was about 2 years old.  We lived in a duplex there.  I used to like to go out in the middle of the highway and sit down.  Larry would go running in to tell mom, sis is in the road.  Not much traffic then.  They finally had to make me a play house out of wire fencing. It was a circle and had a linoleum floor.  I had to be locked in to keep from going out into the road. 
     Then there was what we called the long house.  I was four years old.  It also was off of Highway twenty, across from where we lived in the duplex on a side road.  It had a high concrete porch on the front.  Mom has a picture of me sitting on the porch steps.  I had very long hair.  It had never been cut in the back, just bangs.  Aunt Mary, my mom's little sister, was visiting and she was pulling Larry and I in a wagon.  There is a picture of us in the wagon on that porch.  She wasn't paying attending to where she was going and stepped off the end of the concrete porch and go hurt very bad.  The next place I do not remember much about.  It was a few houses up from where the long house was.  The only thing I remember about that, was it was built on a slope and mom stored things she couldn't use under the house.  There was an open area under the house.  David Brunson and his family would come to visit and we would go under the house and try to eat sand rocks.  
     Our next move was to another rent house.  I don't remember any of the moves and not much about the inside of the houses.   All of the houses on Highway 20 were rentals of Mrs. Anderson.  Most of the family's rentals wre from her.  The last house was right off the highway but on the left side of the highway.  Now on the side we lived in when it was a duplex, there was Neal's store the family lived next to the store.  We had a front porch with rails on it.  Mom had a old up right piano out on the front porch.  No room for it in the house.  I remember Larry and I shared a bed room.  Mom and dad was able to buy us twin beds for our room.  I used mine until even after I was married.  The oldest Neal boy, Gary, had a pellet air gun.  One day he was shooting it at our house and hit Aunt Mary in the leg with it.  I think she had a scar on her leg until she died. 
     That is the house we lived in when I started school August of 1959.  Aunt Bernice and her family lived next door to us.  All five of her girls and Larry was attending school at Justus Elementary School.  Larry was in the third grade when I started in first.  Very small school.  I was very shy and didn't talk much at school.  Larry and I called each other brother and sister instead of our first names.  I remember one day sitting in a swing and he came up to me and asked me to call him Larry at school.  It was embar-rassing to him for me to call him brother at school.  I could still call him brother at home.  I got to play with him and my cousins at recess, which when we moved to Sequoyah and started school, I could no longer play with anyone I knew at recess.  I went home many times crying in first grade because I was so scared to be alone.  My sister wasn't born until my second grade year. 
     During our time living in the last house on Highway 20 , mom and dad purchased some property in the Sequoyah Community, 5 miles Northeast of Claremore.  It had a good well, out house and and a two room structure on it.  Mom and dad added three rooms on to the front, and turned the two rooms into three. In December of 1959, during the winter break at school we moved to our new house.  No running water at first and no working bathroom in the house.  No hot water heater or air conditioner.  Our younger sister Patricia "Marlene" came along in January of 1961.  She is eight years younger than me and ten younger than Larry.  Larry graduated in 1969 from Sequoyah and moved to Oklahoma City for electronics training that fall.  He lived in the home place about 10 years, and came back for a short period of time.  I graduated in 1971 and remained in the house until 1974, which was about 14 years.  I moved in with my brother Larry into his mobile home in Catoosa, Oklahoma after graduating from Claremore Junior College (RSU now).  Marlene graduated in 1979 from Sequoyah, but married the first time at the age of 17 in the summer between her Junior and Senior Year of high school.  So she lived in the house for about 16 years, but returned for a short time with her son Bradlee. Mom and dad remained in the house 35 years.  Dad passed in July of 1994.  He was in the hospital for high blood pressure issues and had to be put on oxygen.  He had lost 80% capacity of his lungs by that time.  On Saturday July 30, 1994 at about 8:30 a.m. he passed away in the hospital from heart spasms. He is buried in the Lone Elm Cemetery outside of Claremore.  Mom and dad had just celebrated their 45 Wedding Anniversary on the 21st of July.  
     Mom didn't like living alone and out in the country by herself.  So in February of 1995 she moved into town and put the house up for sale.  She moved to the Milan Building in an apartment off of Blue Starr Drive, on north Willow Avenue.  She had been working in town as a nurses aid in a nursing home since about 1964.  Later she became a Licenses Medication Aid for about 13 years.  She retired from the nursing home at the age of 62, I do believe that was 1991 or 1992.  She had to have eye surgery and could no longer see well enough to continue to work there.  She went from the Nursing Home to a  Day Care Center for three years until she turned 65.  She remained in the Milan Building about 19 years before passing away December 28, 2014 at Saint John's Medical Center in Tulsa of kidney failure.  She had been battling cancer for 15 years.  She had breast cancer in 1999.  About three years later they found the lymphoma. She was cancer free of the breast cancer.  She is buried in the Lone Elm Cemetery across the grave yard from dad.  She wanted to be buried beside him, but that didn't work out.  It was close to 20 years between Leon and Letha's deaths. Leon died July 30, 1994, Eletha died December 28, 2014.  

     I have enjoyed writing this story of my parents and our family's lives.  I am very sure I have missed a lot, especially about my dad.  Many things I should have included about my mom, such as she was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma only one born in a hospital of seven children.  Her dad Oscar grew up in Inola and moved the family back there in 1934 when him and Martha had just the first two children.  She attended school in Inola until the family moved first to Deming, New Mexico for about 3 months, returning to Inola for about another year.  Later in 1948 moving to Willcox, where she met the Johnston's all members of the same church.  Also my Johnston Grandparents moved to Inola in 1957 and built a home.  That is in my Grandpa's history.  But this started out as a history of my dad's life and I couldn't help but add more about our family.  Many things about my dad's life I was told many years after his death.  I don't recall anyone mentioning his childhood and especially not him. 
     He hardly shared much with us kids about his military service.  He talked more to my husband, than he ever did to us.  When he and mom were first married, he always warned her to never come to the bed and shake him awake, he might hurt her.  They were married maybe two weeks and she forgot.  She walked over and shook him awake.  He knocked her clear across the room.  She never did that again.  He also told us about driving in the motor cade at night during the war.  They had to keep their lights off, and look out the side window of the jeep to keep from running off into a ravine.  Boys walking down the road singing Jesus Loves Me and getting up close and blowing them away.   While growing up  we were told to never walk up behind him without his knowledge.  He was still very jumpy over ten years later and would knock your block off if you surprised him from behind.

written by Connie Johnston James, middle child of James "Leon" Johnston and Eletha Hinds Johnston.  April of 2022.