I met Mr. Johnson at my neighbor’s house, as he had been working in her yard. I told him I was interested in getting him to do some work for me, too. When I asked how he was paid — by the job or by the hour—he just said, “God gave me a second chance, so just pay me whatever you think is right.” When I asked him what he meant by that statement, he told me his story.
Robert Lee Johnson II, was born in Decatur Feb. 26, 1951, to Vera May Campbell Johnson and Robert Lee Johnson. He attended school in Decatur until he, his mother, and two brothers left his father and moved to Lockport, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, where his mother found work at a garment factory.
Lee dropped out in the 11th grade to go to work. He said he would travel by train every month or so to work with his father, who was working on a farm for someone on Hwy. 15. Lee would work a week or more here, dr
iving a lime truck for the farm. In Illinois, he worked for the Holiday Inn, as the lead busboy. His parents never reconciled, as his father died when Lee was about 20.
Lee and his wife Mary met in Illinois and have been married 37 years. They have four children, two of which finished school before they returned to Decatur. Mary shared her fond memories of life growing up in Joliette, Ill., in a neighborhood of several mixed races, with all the people around her being “like family.” She told of the lady who took care of everyone’s kids in the community, and of the German man with a hotdog stand who liked her children, sometimes giving them a hotdog.
But Joliette changed. Where they lived was not peaceful and family-like. They could not safely sit on their front porch or in front of a window. There was crime and chaos on every hand. Afraid for their two younger boys to continue living there, they moved back to Decatur for, as Mary said, “some peace.”
The older two children stayed in Illinois, where Racheal married and had three children. Robert Lee, the oldest son, earned a degree in education with plans to coach. However, he soon hired on to work on the pipeline, because of the better salary. He now works as a pipe inspector for a gas company. Michael also works on a pipeline, while Lavell drives an 18-wheeler.
I asked Lee and Mary whether they thought the racial situation in Decatur was better than when Lee was a child growing up. He readily replied that, yes, he thought it was much better. But Mary said she could not give an opinion, as she did not come to Decatur until later. She believes things in America are reversing from the progress that had been made since the sixties.
Lee’s mother was a Baptist and kept the boys in church in Illinois, and he attended church in Decatur as well. I learned from a friend that his father’s brother’s wife, Aunt Eve Johnson, was a member of the Church of God in Christ, a Pentecostal denomination, and was called Missionary Johnson by the people of Decatur because of her practice of praying for people around town. His brother, Bobby Lee Johnson, the middle child, pastors a church in Milwaukee, Wis. Lee reported that they have been praying and seeing miracles of healing there. This has a bearing on Lee’s story.
Mr. Johnson told me of the time God gave him a second chance in life. He said, “When I turned 62 years old, I had a heart attack, three strokes, and Rocky Mountain Fever from a tick bite. My wife found me on the bathroom floor and carried me to Rush Hospital. The doctor started working on me. They said they’d never had a patient come with so much wrong with him.”
He stayed on life support for seventeen days. “The doctor told me my heart was beating too slow. They had to find out what the problem was. They ran tests and then said, ‘You have four blockages in your heart. We’ll have to put in a stent.’ My brother said, ‘Would you wait just a minute. God wants me to read a scripture to him first.’
“Then when he was through reading, he told the doctor, ‘You don’t have to worry about that stent in his heart. God said He’s gonna take care of it.’ When the doctor went in to look, he took pictures and looked and showed me.” Where before there had been four blockages, now there were none. The doctor said, ‘The only thing I can tell you is – it had to be God!”
During the time he was unconscious, he had what is called a near-death experience. As he recounted the experience, he said, “When I went out of here, God reached down and grabbed my hand, lifted me up, and we kept going up. When we got to this place I called Heaven, I had a feeling that you couldn’t get down here. Joy! When I looked up, just like I’m looking now…when I come out of there in the light…couldn’t see nothing but wall, as far as I could see.”
“Then He told me, ‘I’m not going to take you in. I need peoples like you down there. You’re a leader.’ He told me, ‘Your son Michael is just like you. I was telling my brother about the light I had seen. He said I was looking in God’s eyes. That’s why I realize I was looking at the light of God’s eyes. That’s what changed my life. I was a devil once upon a time.”
I asked, “Were you a believer?” He replied in the affirmative, but he explained that this experience changed his life and made him start living for God. This happened five years ago. He is now a regular churchgoer and member of Little Rock Baptist Church on Hwy. 503.
His pastor, Rev. Carl Smith, said, “Bro. Johnson is a wonderful man, a faithful church member, and one I’m glad to call my friend.”
Bro. Johnson told me about God’s leading, “I go to the nursing home and talk to old people. And young kids here at church. Whatever He puts on my heart, that’s what I try to do.”
Speaking of doing God’s leading, Jesus taught in the story of the Good Samaritan that we should be good to our neighbors, not matter what their race. Our enemy, the one Jesus confronted in the wilderness, wants racial unrest and war in our nation, and it seems from what we see on the daily news that he is getting what he wants. We must pray for our nation and examine ourselves as to how we can help America in this respect, especially our own Decatur.
You may contact me at lagnesrussell @gmail.com or 601-635-3282.
