Last Name Index
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

	Lucille Burnham Johnson Gloucester, Massachusetts Brick Section E - Row 17
I am honoring her because she was a wonderful mother and she was delighted when I graduated from ISU in 1975. MEMORIES OF MOTHE Lucille Burnham Johnson was my stepmother. My mother had died in 1933 after giving birth to my younger sister, Alice, leaving my father a widower with three young daughters, Cynthia, age 5, the infant, Alice, and me, 19 months old. She married my father Charles Edgar Johnson, when I was four years old. I was delighted to have a mother. I cannot remember how old I was when I started calling her "Mothe" instead of Mother or Mom. The name seemed to fit her and we all began calling her Mothe. Once her son, David, said to her, when she scolded Alice, "Don’t be a wicked stepmother." She never was. She treated Cynthia and Alice and I the same way she treated her own children, Grace and David. My childhood was carefree even though much of the time my father was ill and away from home in a mental hospital. Mothe told us he had a nervous breakdown. In those days, mental illness was not discussed I did not understand what nervous breakdown meant when I was young. I did know that I was afraid of my father when he was ill and I avoided him. She was always available. When I was 14, we moved to Portland, Maine to live with Mothe's sister, Grace Christensen, and her husband, Harry. Mothe was expecting another child and Dad was still hospitalized. Those were rough years, but we all survived. I did not have as many clothes or as much spending money as other girls at Deering High School, but I received a good education there. Perhaps Mothe should have explained that there was no money for me to go to college. Instead, she encouraged me to take college preparatory classes in high school, which I did. She supported me until I was 18 and then I was on my own financially. After I graduated from Deering High School in 1950, I worked as a file clerk until I learned how to take shorthand and then I did secretarial work before and after I married my husband in Portland, Maine. and at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan where my husband earned his degrees in microbiology. In 1962 we moved to Ames, Iowa with our two and a half year old daughter, Ann Elizabeth, and our 6 months old son, John Charles. Even though I have lived in the midwest since I was 22 years old, Mothe was always part of my life. We exchanged letters and telephone calls often and I sent her pictures of my children and we visited Massachusetts every other year until my father died in 1967. Then Mothe began to come visit us. She loved Iowa. "You can see the sky here, Betty," she often told me. She enjoyed my friends and neighbors and she was delighted when I started taking courses at Iowa State University in 1969. And when I finally graduated from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences with a B.A. degree in Journalism and Mass Communications in November- 1975, she flew out to attend my graduation ceremony and the Open House I had afterwards. Her last visit to Iowa was in May, 1981. Our daughter, Ann, married Michael D. Rouse on May 23 and Mothe participated in the wedding service. On her 70th birthday my sisters and our husbands and my brother and some of her grandchildren gathered at Amherst, Massachusetts at Grace's home for a celebration. She was so pleased to have all of us together again for a weekend. Arid again, on her 75th birthday, August 25, 1982, I flew out alone to help her celebrate with a slightly smaller group of relatives at Grace's home again. She usually had Thanksgiving dinner with Grace and David, but that November she said she did not feel well. We all suspected the worst. She died m her sleep at Addison Gilbert Hospital m Gloucester, Massachusetts on December 4, 1982. I am honoring her with a brick at the Carrie Chapman Catt Plaza for Heroines, because she was a wonderful mother and because she was so delighted that I had received a degree from Iowa State University. My oldest granddaughter, Melinda Ann Rouse, was born July 21,1983. Before she died, Mothe knew that I was going to be a grandmother, and she was happy for me. Now 20 years after I graduated from Iowa State University, Melinda, a 7th grader, has told us she too wants to go to Iowa State University as her grandmother and mother and father and uncle and aunt did. I'm sure Mothe would be pleased. Gloucester Daily Times, Monday, December 6, 1982 Lucille B. (Burnham) Johnson, 75, wife of the late Charles Edgar Johnson, of 24 Riverside Ave., died Saturday morning at Addison Gilbert Hospital She was born in Gloucester on August 25, 1907, daughter of the late Dr. Allan Stanley Burnham and Florence (Dustin) Burnham. She was a graduate of Gloucester High School Class of 1925 and the Bouve Boston School of Physical Education Class of 1928. Mrs. Johnson worked as a physical education teacher first at Northfield School for Girls, then at Newton High School and later at Beaver Country Day School. Mrs. Johnson was one of the best known field hockey and lacrosse players in this section of the country, having been on the 1933 All American Field Hockey Team, and for four years, 1932-1936, a member of the All American Lacrosse Team. In 1935, she was a member of the United States Womens Lacrosse Touring Team which played matches in England and Scotland. She was a past president of the Boston Field Hockey Association and a former secretary of the United States Women's Lacrosse Association. From 1961 to 1970, she worked as a Recreation Therapist for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, department of Youth Services, in Jamaica Plain. From 1970 to 1971, she worked as a recreation therapist at Melrose-Wakefield Hospital in the Psychiatric Unit. From 1971 to 1974, she worked as a House Mother at Endicott College in Beverly. In the summers of 1974 and 1975, she worked at the White-Ellery House for the Cape Ann Historical Society. She is survived by a son, David Charles Johnson of Cambridge; four daughters, Cynthia J. Ward of Princeton, N.J., Elizabeth A. Wright of Ames, Iowa, Alice Park- of Mount Airy, MD, and Grace J. Craig of Amherst; eight grandchildren; a great-granddaughter, a sister, Grace Bumham Christensen of South Freeport Maine, and several nieces and nephews. ONE WOMAN'S OPINION... My mother died December 4 and I was devastated. I cannot explain how empty I felt. The person whom I had confided in for years was gone. Whom could I turn to? I soon found out that my three sisters and brother felt as I did- And we turned to each other in our grief and we found happiness sharing our memories of her and we comforted each other. We planned her memorial service together and each of us did what he or she could. I read the New Testament scriptures from John, Chapter 14 and I Thessalonians, Chapter 4. And believing what I read has also helped me cope. I hope it may help others m our congregation who have recently lost loved ones. "We want you to be quite certain, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, to make sure that you do not grieve about them, like, like the other people who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and that it will be the same for those who have died in Jesus: God will bring them with him." (Thessalonians, Chapter 4, Jerusalem Bible) Betty Wright 7/1/96
Narrative Updated: 10/27/1995
Honored By:	Elizabeth A. Wright