Yes, March 20, she will have been a Tupperware dealer and/or manager for forty-seven years! I interviewed Mrs. Dorothy Helen Rigdon Johnson on her birthday, February 20, this year, but she had been born in 1945, just a few months before my own birthday. As you could figure, she has been selling Tupperware for over half of her life. She told me that was one of the greatest miracles of her life, as God caused her to become successful in doing something she had no idea she could do!
Born one of nine children to Clifton and Odessa Rigdon Johnson, Helen Johnson has lived in this area all her life. Her father did county work, was the custodian of all the county buildings, and her mother was a stay-at-home mom. They and four of her siblings have passed away, but she still has three living sisters.
Mrs. Bonnie Rigdon Gibbon will be ninety years old on March 6. Helen told me, “She has been almost like my mother. Very special. Everybody loves Ms. Bonnie!” Married to Charles Gibbon, deceased, they had two sons, also deceased.
Her sister Lula Hill, lives out from Laurel and, married to Herman Hill, has two daughters. Her sister Rava Patterson, married to John, deceased, had no children. Helen’s sister Willa Estes, was married to Hamp Estes, deceased, and had five children. Rava lives in Decatur, while Willa lives in Little Rock.
Helen graduated from Beulah-Hubbard High School in 1963, and married Jerry Johnson from Lauderdale County on June 29, 1963. His parents were Vernon and Alice Johnson. Jerry worked at La-Z-Boy for forty-four years before retiring at the age of 63 in 2007. He had his first heart attack when he was forty-four and died of a massive heart attack at the age of seventy-three, on December 18, 2017.
Her reply to my question as to how they met was memorable. Helen’s father required her to go on dates as a chaperone with her sister and her boyfriend. During her junior year, in 1961, her sister’s boyfriend said, “I’m going to bring somebody for you next week.” She told him, “You need to.” So he brought Jerry. She reminisced, “We were just kids. Married all our lives.”
Helen and Jerry had two children, Jerry Eugene, born April 26, 1964, and Rava Ranee, born August 26, 1968. Eugene works for Cooper Trucking Company, and is married to Robin Cockrell Johnson from Quitman. They have four children. Josh, born in 1987, has two children, Jake, six, and Cruz, five. The twin girls Syndey and Shelby were born in 1997, and Josi, born in 2005, is 14.
Ranee, a director of operations at Mobile Infirmary Hospital, is married to Rick Chenoweth of Bay Minette, Alabama. Their oldest Krysten, with her husband Justin Vauner, has a boy, David, ten years old. Their second, Ricky Chenoweth, is not married, and Tony Chenoweth, is married to Chelsey from Alabama. Tony and Chelsey have Charlotte, five years old.
Helen told me she grew up attending the Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church. When she was about twelve, at a revival, she joined the church. However, above thirty years old, she realized, “I was not saved. I was saved right here at my house. I’d go to church, and it looked like the pastor wasn’t preaching to anybody except me.” She continued, “God just opened my eyes. I walked the aisle, told the pastor, and I was baptized again.” She mused, “I am awfully afraid that there are lots and lots of church members that are not saved.”
Jerry had been a deacon from 1975 at Pleasant Ridge Baptist. They moved to Sand Springs Baptist Church in 2007, where they presently attend, and he became a deacon there. He had dropped out of school as a kid. But when he was fifty, in 1995, long after he had started working at La-Z-Boy, he got his G.E.D. Understandably proud, she said, “The grandkids helped him. And they wanted him to march, so he did.” By December 2017, when Helen’s husband passed away, they had been married fifty-four years.
During those years, Helen had cancer twice, but in both cases, with removal of her breast in 1985 and removal of 27 inches of her colon in 2007, she did not have to have chemo or radiation treatments. This was a great blessing, and she also mentioned times when God helped with her children’s health. Then she continued, “We married young, therefore had a family young. But God not only blessed me in my family, He has blessed me in my business.”
In 1973, Helen was invited to a Tupperware party. Helen said she was young, inexperienced, with no further training than high school, but, she recalled, “Glenna Berry, a Tupperware distributor, saw something in this little 20-something-year-old that I didn’t see in myself.” But God saw it in her and opened the doors. She said, “I got my first company car when I was thirty.” She drove a Tupperware company car for forty years.
She entered the business in 1973, and in 1975, Tupperware asked her to be an Executive Manager. She was able to bless her marriage, as, she says, “Jerry was very supportive. We did it together. We went to Acapulco, Mexico; Madrid, Spain; Portugal, on two cruises, four times to Honolulu, Hawaii.
Helen explained, “When I joined Tupperware, I didn’t have much confidence in myself. He encouraged me. I built a team. I still have a team. My title today is a ‘Director.’ Tupperware’s been good to me, and I’ve been good to Tupperware.” She remembers, “Kids say, ‘There’s the Tupperware lady.’” She made the decision to turn in her company car in January of 2019, to stop pushing herself so much as she is getting older. She brags on her dealers, “I’ve got a good group of women that work under me. We sell about “$8,000 – $12,000 per month.”
She shared a bit of information about their church and the change in pastors they have recently experienced. Rev. Glenn Hayman had pastored Sand Springs for eleven years before he passed away October 2019. “The people loved him so much,” Helen said. The pulpit committee had searched, and Bro. Ben Harper, a member of Clarke-Venable Baptist and not an ordained minister, had filled in a number of times. On the fourth Sunday night in October 2019, Sand Springs Baptist Church voted Rev. Harper in as pastor. He was ordained in November. She reflected, “Bro. Glenn really liked Bro. Ben, and he was wonderful his last weeks or months of life, visiting him in the hospital. We love him and Brenda. The church is growing so much.”
Having learned of Mrs. Helen Johnson from Brenda Harper at City Hall, I’m glad I got to meet this wonderful Christian lady. I’m glad I could share her story with you all, as we both give glory to God, for all His wonderful workings in our lives.
Live for Jesus! He’s coming soon!
You may contact me at lagnesrussell@gmail.com or 601-635-3282.
