Page 94 - Life Legacy Project

A Legacy
Joyce Johnson, age 98
My great-grandmother Joyce Johnson is very amazing, she always has a smile on her face and she never thinks negatively. I would like to honor her because she is a role model to everyone in my family especially me, she has a great sense of humor and is always in a good mood. Joyce Johnson is a brave, fiercely independent, funny, kind, and happy person.
Joyce had a very happy childhood, she was born on July 7th, 1918 in Clyde, North Dakota. She was raised on a farm with her mother, father, five brothers and one sister. Joyce was surrounded by a lot of love, she was a quiet child, well mannered, and very cheerful. She did little chores around the house but her brothers and father worked outside. She skipped two and a half years of school, started high school at age 11, and graduated at the age of 15. Joyce’s dream when she was a child was to become an English teacher but her family didn’t have enough money to send her to college.
As an adult Joyce wanted to be a wife and a mother. After her youngest child was put in school she needed to find a job quickly so she applied to KBRC Radio Station and she got hired. She worked there for 30 years and she is very happy about her choice. Some jobs she had before she was married and started her family were a household helper, worked in a dime store, and a cannery packaging vegetables. Her favorite job was the KBRC radio station because she loved working with numbers and it made her get out of her comfort zone. My great grandma still says her all-time favorite job was taking care of her children. One memory that impacted Joyce the most was losing her husband at the age of 41 and still having to raise her young children on her own. She learned that she had to go on without him. Several years later her son passed but she learned that she still had to go on. Her favorite tradition is when the whole family gets together on Christmas day every year because she is surrounded by family and love.
An average day for Joyce is rather lonely because she lives alone but she tries to keep busy by going to garden club, luncheons, meetings, floral arts, conventions, attending church, and publishing her poems. Joyce’s strongest desire would be to live to be 100 years old in July of 2018! One wish she has for the world would be peace because there has been war after war but she thinks it hasn’t solved anything. She spends time thinking about writing poetry and about her happy memories, she hears her kids calling her on her phone, her TV with the news and Dr. Phil, the microwave beeping that her coffee is ready, chirping of the birds outside, and cars driving by. Some things she sees everyday are tulip and daffodil fields, mountains, trees and flowers, and gray skies. A piece of advice that she will never forget that her parents told her was to do good and she has tried to do good everyday.
Joyce Johnson has helped our community by going to different clubs and groups, she has been in many parades over the years. She is very busy with writing and publishing poems for the newspaper and different magazines. I admire how joyful she always is because every time I see her she is smiling, she never dwells on the past.
I really hope you enjoyed reading about my great grandmother and now you know how amazing she is and why I look up to her as a role model. Her favorite saying was “bless you” because she loves people and she wants to bless them. She told me at the end of our interview that her one piece of advice for our generation is “be true to yourself.”
By Vivian Rose Cram
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