The last 100 years have brought tremendous changes in our
world and Eyvonne Johnson of Exeter has had a front row seat to see them all.
Johnson, was born Eyvonne Jensen on December 9, 1921 on a
farm just north of Exeter. She lived
there and started school out at a country school before her family moved to
town when she was five years old.
She remembers there was a difference of opinion with the
school superintendent when she moved as she didn’t meet the age cut off to
start school. She was five but there was no kindergarten and with a December
birthday the superintendent thought she wasn’t old enough to start.
She thinks she went anyway and did first grade twice to make
the superintendent happy and graduated from Exeter High School in 1939.
After graduation she started working as an assistant to the
dentist in Exeter. She even learned to
do a filling if the dentist was unavailable.
After a few years she took a job at a department store, Miller and
Paine, in Lincoln.
This was a great adventure.
In 1941 she shared a house with the Votipka sisters from Exeter and went
to her job in the jewelry department at the department store. She recalled the quirks of the downtown
landmark, “the money went in a tube and was vacuumed upstairs and they sent the
change down.”
After a while she got a “better job” at the Nebraska Farmer
where she sold health insurance and sent out the billing notices.
In 1942 her life changed drastically. She took a train to Los Angeles and she and
Arden Johnson traveled to Las Vegas with friends where they were married.
She had known Arden in high school but they never dated. He
was two years older and had grown up by Cordova. He headed to the university
after high school but he had asked her on a date so she thought of him when it was
time to find a date to the junior senior prom.
“Winds of the past, ring the bells of the future” was the
theme for the prom which she still recalls, “I have the invitation which was
all handmade. We made everything by hand
back then,” Eyvonne explained.
Arden had a job working at a bank in Los Angeles and she
didn’t find a job right away but instead volunteered at the draft office in Los
Angeles. They had taken a short
honeymoon trip to Boulder City to see the Boulder Dam (a.k.a. Hoover Dam) and
returned to Arden’s apartment in Los Angeles.
Arden had registered for the draft in Geneva before he left
for California. Before he was called up
he served as a night watchman patrolling the streets of Los Angeles while
Eyvonne kept their blackout curtains closed in their apartment.
Before long, Arden’s number came up in the draft and the
couple returned to Exeter so that Arden could be shipped off right back to
California for basic training.
Eyvonne stayed in Exeter with her parents while Arden was
gone. She got a call from the airbase
asking her to come and work there. She went to work there in the payroll
department where she did the civilian payroll.
For some reason the government paid all of the civilian
employees in cash. She recalls they
would figure their hours and then the pay that was due them. The Military Police would go get the cash in
York and they had to get the cash ready for payday and use every coin or they
would have to goback through the envelopes until each coin was used. The MP’s
also accompanied them as the distributed the pay.
Arden didn’t return home right after D-day. He stayed in the
Paris, France area he didn’t have enough points (the army awarded points for
time served, combat duty, overseas service and parenthood). They didn’t have
children so it took him longer to get home.
By the time he returned Eyvonne explained “there were no
welcome home celebrations.”
When he returned they had to decide what they were going to
do, return to LA and banking or stay in Nebraska. They chose to stay in Nebraska returing to
the family farm where they stayed until 1990 when they returned and moved to
town.
Although they never did have kids, they had “lots of nieces
and nephews come and stay with us. The
farm was a wonderful place to come and play.
They had a wonderful time,”
Eyvonne reminisced.
Coming into a town
was a struggle at first, “We didn’t know anything but work I think,” she
explained.
She added that Arden always kept busy because he could fix
things around the house. He did in 2002
just before their 60th anniversary.
They traveled all over the United States together and
purchased a winter home in Texas where they stayed six months out of the year.
In Texas they had a lot of company, and even had a club of
people from Nebraska that met once a
month.
She has attended the UCC Congregational church her whole
life and is an avid Husker fan as season ticket holders for many many
years. She shared photos of the last
game she attended when she was 95 and enjoyed a game from a skybox (where Larry
the Cable guy was a guest, too).
Her hobbies are evident in her home which displays her
beautiful needlepoint, painting and decoupage.
She enjoys watching birds from her kitchen and has lots of flowers and
herb to attend.
She enjoys reminiscing about the old days She recalled going to a movie when she was
young where the news reel showed what the future would be like with
technology. She couldn’t believe it then
but is living in that world now. “Everything is advanced. When I was a kid we
didn’t have this or that. The world has really changed. It seemed like such a better life than what we
have now…neighbors would rake their leaves to the side of the road and burn
their leaves. The neighborhood together
had a good time.”
On the same token she noted the good changes, “We had no
electricity on the farm and had the whole house wired and it was a great thing.”
She also mentioned the improvements in phones and
farms. “We wouldn’t farm the way they
farm now. It takes a lot of money to be
a farmer now. We see how they do it now.
We wasted a lot of good moisture by farming the way we farmed.”
She didn’t have any real secrets to a long life, “I think
the good Lord has a lot to do with that. I know one thing, I worked hard. There was no easy hand out of money.”
She gets a little frustrated as her memory isn’t as “sharp”
as it used to be and there is “nobody around here my age to help me remember.”
Neighbors and friends decorated the inside and the outside
of her home in Exeter with balloons and signs to mark the occasion of her 100th
birthday.
