John Cadien Johnson, Jr.

On Sunday, January 27, 1935, the Palestine, Texas, Presbyterian Church evening service was canceled because a baby boy, John Cadien Johnson, Jr., was born to The Reverend John C. Johnson, Sr. and Elizabeth Ellyson Johnson.

Being a PK (preacher’s kid), J.C. moved several times, living first in Palestine, Texas, then Yorktown, Texas, and then to Ballinger, Texas, until his father went off to World War II.

It was then his mother and the children returned to her hometown, Georgetown, Texas, to live with her mother, Mrs. John N. Ellyson, Sr. Here J.C. attended 3rd and 4th grades and came to understand the importance of family both present and past. He came to know his much admired older cousins, as well as those retired to the old cemetery down by the river and the Georgetown IOOF Cemetery. This is where 77 years later he would be laid to rest with his Ellyson and Clamp ancestors.

After the war, the family moved to Berkely, California, where J.C. was a member of the Berkely Jr. Traffic Police, his first official civic duty. Next came the forever changing move to Bishopville, South Carolina. These two formative years planted in him a love of all things southern, the homes, the food, the history, and the genteel people. Leaving the dear old southland and moving to Graham Texas, seemed the end of the world. But the move was a good one for the family. J.C. was a cheerleader, had his first job in a service station, and rode around town with his friends, the “slimey boys,” in the car they named “the blue haze” because of the smoke coming from the exhaust. Here he was given his first car, a Willys coupe that survived only one summer. He graduated from Graham High School in 1953.

J.C. went to Austin College, Sherman, Texas, for two years. He was a member of the Austin College Acapella Choir but still longed to return to the south. Finally, he did return, spending the next two years at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina, where he became a member of Kappa Alpha Fraternity and earned a degree in History.

After college he went into the army. He was fortunate that he went into the field of intelligence, his lifelong profession until his retirement in 1986. Following his time in the military, he went to work for the Office of Naval Intelligence and then the Defense Investigative Service, working in Washington, D.C., Iceland, and Atlanta, Georgia.

Being a PK, J.C. was not only involved in his local church, but he was a part of the larger Presbyterian Denomination. He was proud of the fact he was in attendance the day the Northern Presbyterian and Southern Presbyterian churches joined into the Presbyterian Church we know today.

Most importantly, J.C. was a model father. He and Rochelle Hicks had three children, Cade, Mina, and Julianne, raising them with a sense of doing what’s right with a splash of humor. As Mina says in her poem to her father, “Thanks for teaching me how to tell a joke and spin a yarn and to do it always with a grin and southern charm.”

In 1986 J.C. retired and came, once more, to Georgetown to the home of his grandmother. Here he married Linda Brady Kirton, and the two of them set off into the project that would consume their hearts for a lifetime. Their objective was to restore and embellish the family home and grounds. Being purists, it was their desire to reflect the passing of time experienced by an ordinary family in an ordinary place over the past 100 years. It was here in the front bedroom, where his mother was born and died, that J.C. died on August 28, 2022.

So, from the entire family, we say thank you for your wisdom, guidance, patience and support, for tree houses and tire swings, for ukulele and concertina concerts, for anchovies on pizza and crackers with sardines, for cemetery tours and history lessons along the road, for fossil and mushroom hunts, for Blue Hole cliff jumping, and for driving lessons in the 1970 M.G. Midget. With all our love, your M.G. awaits, drive on!

Services will be private.