"I had a lot more time when I was working," Johnson said. "Or else I was better organized."
She's a 46-year member of the Theta Chi Epsilon sorority of Southern California, started by two Glendale residents 55 years ago.
She was born in Glendale in 1927 and celebrated her 60-year reunion at Glendale High School last year. She remembers street cars on Brand Boulevard and was in high school when the neon spike at the Alex Theatre was added.
Glendale News-Press News Assistant Rachel Kane reminisced with Johnson about Glendale's good old days and asked her some questions.
What changes in Glendale's institutions have you seen over the years?
"I was born in Glendale Adventist when it was Glendale Sanitarium and Hospital. In those days they had cages with monkeys in the back of the hospital. Boy, that place has grown and just keeps growing. I went to Doran, which is now Richard D. White. It used to be called Doran Street School. And then [I attended] Wilson Junior High and Glendale High and then Glendale College before I went into nurses training."
What was teenage life like in Glendale during the '40s?
"It was certainly different. We could walk down in Glendale and … of course we would go to Bob's. It's really funny because my husband's father was in the service and he developed tuberculosis and my mother-in-law was a widow for a number of years and then she married the man who developed the original Bob's Big Boy malt machine, Owen Betry. Everything is changed. They used to have the Right Spot on Glendale Avenue and Parker's Night Owl, where everybody used to congregate."
What do you do to keep busy in retired life?
