Len (Leonard) Johnson:
CLASS OF 1961
Shadle Park High SchoolClass of 1961
Spokane, WA
Len (Leonard)'s Story
Life My Bio started in 1943 in Klamath Falls Oregon, but life didn't really begin till Easter Sunday 1995. My wife and I were sitting at home having just our normal mundane life eating dinner. I looked at my beautiful wife, and said "you need to start going to Church, as you are just too nice to spend eternity in Hell". She said, "Who do you think you are? suggesting what I do with my life" That is an example of how we dealt with each other. I started weeping, and she came over and put her hands on me, and she started weeping out of control herself. We didn't know what was going on, (We sure do now!) but something told us to get to church. We didn't have one, so we grabbed the yellow pages. There was one a couple of blocks to the right, and one a half mile to the left. We chose the right. Grace Harvest Fellowhip on Sullivan road. We walked into the service that was already in progress. I don't even remember what the pastor was preaching about that day, but when at the end of the service he asked if anyone would like to accept Christ, both my wife and I went forward, and I will tell you this our lives have never been the same since. Knowing the Lord personally, and appreciating what God himself did by becoming man, living a sinless life, and then giving his life for us on the cross and rising again on the third day, really changes lives, and gives the peace that Christ say's he will. For whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved--Romans 10:13 & Acts 4:12 HERE ARE A FEW OF THE THINGS THAT ALMOST INSTANTLY IN MY LIFE CHANGED 180 DEGREES. 1. BAD BAD TEMPER--GONE! 2. MENTAL VERBAL ABUSE OF MY WIFE FOR 25 YEARS--GONE! THIS WAS BAD! 3. UPTIGHT MOST OF THE TIME--GONE! 4. FOUL LANGUAGE--GONE! 5. HATED WHAT I SAW IN THE MIRROR 6. LOVE NOW WHAT I SEE IN MIRROR 7 EVERY NIGHT STOPPING FOR MY 2 OR 3 DOUBLES AT THE SEA GALLEY OR ANYONE OF 3 OR 4 BARS I USED TO FREQUENT. ALL THE BARMAIDS IN THE VALLEY KNEW LEN. IN FACT I WENT BACK ONE TIME AND SAT IN THE LOT FOR 15 MINUTES. THE LORD SPOKE TO MY HEART AND SAID IF HE COULD GO IN THEN I COULD GO IN. I SAID "NO LORD, THIS IS NOT A PLACE WHERE YOU WOULD BE, SO I LEFT, AND HAVEN'T BEEN IN A BAR IN 8 YEARS. 8. MONEY, MATEREIAL THINGS AND MY STOCK CAR AND GO-KART RACING WAS A PRIORITY--NO MORE, GOD'S FIRST! 9. NO MORE FINANCIAL WORRY'S 10. NO PEACE OF MIND--A REAL LOST SOUL WHO WAS ALWAYS SAYING IF THIS IS ALL THERE IS, I DON'T WANT ANYMORE. 11. SELFISH--WHAT WAS GOOD FOR LEN & THATS THE WAY IT WAS. 12. DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO SHOW AFFECTION. I HUGGED MORE PEOPLE IN THE FIRST YEAR OF BEING SAVED THAN I HUGGED THE FIRST 52 YEARS OF MY LIFE. 13. NEGATIVE OUTLOOK--GONE! 14. DIDN'T SMILE VERY OFTEN AND PEOPLE WERE AFRAID OF ME. NOW MY FROWN LINES HAVE BEEN REPLACED BY SMILE LINES. 15. OBSESSED WITH NEGATIVE WORLD SITUATIONS, AND WAS ADDICTED TO TALK RADIO, I.E. RUSH, LIDDY, AND ART BELL. NOT NOW! NOW I AM ADDICTED TO CHRISTIAN RADIO, AND TV, AND MY WONDERFUL CHRISTIAN CD'S AND TAPES. If anyone would like to know how to get what I have, I would love to talk with you more about what the Lord has done in my life. I look forward to hearing from a good many old friends. Workplace As a young man in high school and a few years after, I spent a total of 7 years with Rosauers Mkts. Then moved to Seattle and spent 17 years with the Golden Grain Macaroni Co in Sales & Sales Management. I was upper Sales management from 75-81. Bought my own small convenience Grocery store from 81-83. From 83-92 I sold Subarus, at 3 dealerships starting in Spokane, and finishing at Auburn Subaru and became their New & Used car manager for Auburn Subaru from 88-90 In 91 moved back to Spokane, and managed the used car department at Camp Subaru. From 92-02 I worked for Alpine Custom Buildings constructing post frame garages, shops and barns, and managed their Spokane operation on South Pines the last 5 years I was one of 1200 applications for an account executive position with Transwestern Publishing in Bellevue Wa. In June. I was one of 3 hired as an advertis...Expand for more
ing Account executive for their yellow page directory. I love the job, and financially doing as well as I ever have done, and live at Lake Tapps (Not waterfront) between Bonney Lake & Auburn Wa., and hope this is where I will be when I take my early retirement. UPDATE!! In May of 2004 we bought a home in Olympia, Wa. and this I hope will be here until the Lord comes. Military My good friend in school, Dwight Bliss and I joined the Navy reserve together in what they called the buddy system in highschool We went to Boot camp and on our two week wonder cruise between our junior and senior year. Our cruise was on the Destroyer USS Watts. We went to Alaska via the inland passage. Oh what a fiasco that was. The captain ran through some fishing nets and tore them up. We also went to fast and swamped some waterfront property with the wake of the boat. As I remember, the Navy had a sizeable bill to pay for all the damage we did. We docked first in Juneau. At that time there had not been a Navy ship there since world war 2. It was quite a big event for the townfolks. Different familys had all the crew members invited to their homes for dinner. The home I went to were native Alaska Indians (Eskimos), and I remember the daughter fell in love with me. I don't remember much about that part of it, except she wrote me little pen pal type letters for a few months after we got back to port. Dwight & I were scheduled for active duty. Dwight spent his active duty as I recall totally in Japan. I went to pier 91 in Seattle to be processed, and at that time was determined to be the worst case of color blindness they had ever seen. (About 99%) In fact they paraded me around to all the different offices to show different people how bad I was. They could not believe that I could not make out any numbers in the book except part of a 6. If you are not color blind, you will see numbers on each page. I then received a medical discharge for colorblindness. I then went back to my former job at Rosauers, and started college in Cheney. About 6 months later I received a draft notice stating they had rescinded the color blind rule. Later on I found out that they planned to use color blind guys as spotters from helicopters in Viet Nam because color bline people can spot camoflauges where as a normal vision can not. I gave notice at work again, and was planning to go active duty. Before leaving some friends and I went to Coeur D' Alene to have a litte fun before I left. On the way back home that evening I had an attack of pain so severe in the stomach, that we had to pull off to the side of the road until it passed. The next day, I went to the doctor, and they determined that I had floating kidneys. Not only did they float around inside me, but I had 3 of them to boot,which is extremely rare, and with double ureter cords. This is what caused the painful attack, the kidneys moved around enough to cause the ureter cords to tangle up. Well anyway, to make a long story short, I got my final medical discharge, and have gone on from there to wear many times a brown and a black sock,or a blue and a green, and as my wife say's some of the most un Godly color combinations imaginable. It is a real handicap to be color blind. I see colors just like everyone else does, but they look different to me. For example, green, browns, blacks can all be the same if I see them at different times. If I see them all lined up together, I can see the different shades, but it is real difficult telling what color they are. Purples and blues look the same to me. In fact in 1970 I bought a blue plymouth roadrunner of the showroom floor. The first person I took to show my new blue plymouth to, informed me that the car was purple. :) That is it for my Military career, but I enjoyed my time in the Navy, and I loved the food, believe it or not. When I was in highschool, I was a skinny 145 to 150lb guy. I think in Boot camp alone I gained 10lb, and have added another 40lbs since then. I loved those mashed potatoes!! and still do.
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