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Gilbert Oscar Victor Johnson
Born May 3, 1910; Married August 17, 1938 (Lylith M. Breitzka, d. Sept 11, 2005); Died May 5, 1997
Children: Bryan Gilbert Johnson, June 24, 1941;
Dwight Leroy
Johnson, February 6, 1943;
Kathryn Ruth Johnson Benjamin, October 29, 1945;
Lauralee Johnson Bailey, May 13. 1947
I was born in West Suburban Hospital in the
Austin
section
of Chicago
as the first born son of Oscar F. and Ruth H. Johnson.
In 1917 my parents sold their house in Chicago
and
we moved
to a 60 acre farm
six miles north of La Porte, Indiana. There
I
attended a one-room
school
house where I had the same teacher for the rest of my eight grades
(2-8).
We went to a Swedish Baptist Church in La
Porte,
where at
the age of 12,
1 was convicted of sin and went forward at the close of the
evening service
and knelt at the front.
The first one with me was my dad, who knelt and prayed
with me. In October of that year I
was
baptized
by Uncle Elam Anderson, who
at that time was studying for his doctorate at the University
of Chicago.
I went to high school in La Porte, and, after
graduation in
June 1928, we sold
our farm and moved to 435 Holliday Street, Michigan City, Indiana. There I
got a job in a factory, and after three years felt
the crunch of the Depression as
the factory where I worked went broke (I
don't think I was the sole cause of it).
They had developed a card table which they manufactured.
In 1933, they sold
the dies to Patterson Manufacturing Company in
Bridgeport, Connecticut and sent
me out there to set it up. This
lasted
less than a year, and for
the next few
years I had various jobs, from running a retail bakery route to
selling
office
equipment for Remington Rand.
While there, I made my greatest sale and
convinced
Lylith
Breitzka to become Mrs Johnson.
Here
the Lord showered me with the greatest blessing ever and continued
in
giving
us four wonderful
children, all of whom became real Christians, and all have real
Christian
spouses and have wonderful
families. All are serving the Lord in different ways,
from pastoring (Bryan) to managing a successful
insurance agency (Dwight, taking an agency started by me and
engineering its
growth).
Kathy is serving with her
husband, Ken Benjamin, as a musician, directing choirs and music
at Calvary
Baptist Church in Bristol, Pennsylvania, where Ken is on the
faculty of
Philadelphia College
of the
Bible. Lauralee is
serving with her husband, Dan Bailey, in First Alliance Church of
Atlanta and
is a
wonderful Christian mother to two extra special boys (part of an
even
dozen
special grandchildren).
Shortly after our marriage, I became Choir
Director at
Temple Baptist Church and then at Elim
Baptist Church in New Britain, Connecticut, where I was now
manager of
the New
Britain office of
Personal Finance Company.
In 1946 I resigned to take a position as
District
Manager
for Club Aluminum Products Company.
This meant moving to Madison, Wisconsin (we thought), but before
our
furniture arrived,
they changed our orders and we went to Louisville,
Kentucky. Later came moves to
Toledo, Ohio,
and then to Atlanta, Georgia. We liked it so well here I quit my
job so l could stay here.
Here a
friend of mine asked me to manage his cemetery, which I did for
ten
years to
the day.
During this time I was directing choirs in
various
churches. Being in the Insurance
business,
and
it being a hard business to get started in (especially with two
children in
college), I took a job as
Minister of Music in a large Baptist church.
After
about five years, I felt I could
meet expenses, so I
went back to our Christian and Missionary Alliance
Church where we liked to be with our friends and
felt more of spiritual oneness with the people, and where I was
still
directing the choir.
We all get together at a cottage on the Atlantic Ocean every other year.
Now, at age 75, I am still active in the
insurance
business
because I like it and like to help people
solve their financial problems.
This all adds up to the fact that I have a
wonderful Saviour
and a wonderful, patient, forgiving God
who has blessed so far above what I
deserve, a wife whom I love more every day, and children, none of
whom has ever given us a moment of trouble or worry.
ISN'T HE WONDERFUL?!!!!!!
- Gilbert Johnson,
1984
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