| Honored by: | Peter Johnson |
| Brick location: | PAVER:8 map |
Born: 10/29/1888 Margaret Huntington on farm near Oakland, Iowa.
Her family soon after moved to Council Bluffs, Iowa where she lived the rest of her life married Peter J. Johnson had three children was widowed early (6/29/25) with dependents aged 4, 6 and 11 plus the responsibility of an expanding pioneer electrical engineering business.
SPIRITUAL FORTITUDE: Left "alone" with three small children in the first years of the "great depression" she soon realized that she could not continue the business which included manufacture of storage, batteries installation of country home and farm, power plants, and sale and maintenance of electric automobiles.
There was very little money in southwest Iowa in those late 1920s. She essentially gave the business to the capable plant foreman accepting an informal promise of payment when and if times improved. Versus continued advice (with no help) of close relatives to place the children in the local "Christian Home" she bought a typewriter (there were no "Adult Night Classes" available) and labored lonely long hours to develop limited secretarial skills.
She obtained precarious employment in the local Assessors Office semi-guaranteed only from election to election. Through more than 25 worry-filled years she kept the job never receiving more than $100/month--ever--due in greatest part to the disparity between the wages of women and men for equivalent work.
INFINITE HUMAN WISDOM: Margaret guided and supported her daughter through a Registered Nurse degree and into teaching at the nursing school from which she had graduated and into a creditable 40 years of nursing service. She helped each of her children with routine homework and special projects leading one son into bank experience and paralegal work the other miraculously to a college engineering degree! Hers was an amazingly broad fount of knowledge. Her children were provided with a strong basic knowledge of the Christian life helping with their problems of finding and keeping employment in a difficult competitive depressed world.
SELFLESS LOVE: Margaret lived long enough to share herself not only with her own three but also with all nine of her grandchildren including the youngest granddaughter whom she visited in California the last year of her life and said granddaughter's first year. She loved both daughters-in-law without reservation and taught them by example to be supportive of their husbands and their families. INDEED "A VALIANT WOMAN": And wise not to live to know the death of any of her children nor of any of her grandchildren! For this we will always be thankful.
4/16/94
Paver Inscription:
"Margaret H.
Johnson
Nee Huntington
1888-1960
Council Bluffs"