Margaret Johnson

Margaret Johnson graduated from Duluth Central High School in June 1960 as salutatorian, a fact she mentioned only once when her son Tom brought home a disappointing report card. She had hoped to attend the university in Minneapolis, but financial constraints led her to enroll in the nursing school at St. Mary's instead. Tom recalled that the nursing program took three years and cost almost nothing if one agreed to work at the hospital afterward. Margaret later described it as the best bad choice she ever made.

Margaret Johnson decided she was going to marry Harold sometime after they met, a moment that likely traces back to a dance at the armory in the spring of 1959. In August 1960, Harold wrote to Margaret from aboard the ore boat Edmund L. Ryerson on Lake Superior. He told her, I have figured out what I have to offer, which is that I will never be rich and I will always come home. If that is enough I would like to talk about it in October when we tie up. If it is not enough I would like to talk about it anyway. He asked her not to tell her father about the letter, as he thought Harold was a bad influence.

Margaret and Harold Johnson's first home was a small two-room apartment above Anderson's hardware store on Fourth Street in Duluth around 1961. Their kitchen was so tiny that Margaret said she could stir the soup from the bed. At that time, Harold had just started working at the docks, and Margaret was finishing her nursing training at St. Mary's. For their first winter together, they shared one coat that was warm enough, so whoever needed to go out would take it. Despite the hardships, Margaret described that year as the best year of her life, according to her daughter Linda Johnson-Parks.

Margaret Johnson began working the night shift at St. Mary's Hospital in 1963, choosing it because it paid a dollar more and because her husband was home to mind their babies. She said, I stayed on nights for forty-one years because, I'll tell you the truth, I liked it. Nights is when people tell you things. Daytime everybody's putting on a show for the visitors. Three in the morning there's no show. She recalled a moment around 1968 or 1969 when a dying Finnish man would ring for her nightly at three a.m., not for anything but company. So I sat. Ten minutes. Every night for three weeks. And the last night he says to me, Margaret, you're the only one who doesn't act like I'm already gone. That's the job. That's the whole job, right there. Sit down for a minute. I told every young nurse that for forty years and about half of them heard me.

Sarah Whitfield remembers that every Sunday the house smelled of cardamom bread, made with a wooden spoon that had a burned handle which Margaret refused to replace. Sarah recalls Margaret's repeated rule: never measure the cardamom. You smelled it until it was right. Sarah has tried to make the bread many times but says, It is never right. I think the rule was the point.

Every summer from about 1948, when Sarah Whitfield was six, she and her brother spent the month of July at the family cabin on Island Lake. Sarah recalls how her grandmother, Margaret Johnson, would wake them at seven by opening the screen door and calling their names once. If they were not up by the second call, Margaret would already be swimming in the lake without them.

In the fall of 1974, Margaret Johnson faced a difficult time when her husband, Harold, was laid off from the docks along with half the North Shore. He remained out of work for fourteen months. During this period, Margaret increased her commitment at her nursing job, moving from part-time to full-time night shifts without mentioning the change to her children. Linda Johnson-Parks, Margaret's daughter, recalls that nothing changed in the house except that Dad started making the pancakes.

In 1987, Margaret Johnson took a trip to Ireland to find the village her mother had come from. She had only one name written on an index card: Ballyhaunis, a village in County Mayo. Margaret told her grandchild Sarah Whitfield that she walked into a pub and said the family name out loud. An old man at the bar put down his glass and said, You'll be wanting the Kellys up the hill.

In her later years, Margaret Johnson maintained a daily ritual of doing the crossword puzzle in pen every morning at the kitchen table. If the weather was warm enough, she would take her crossword outside to the garden, with her reading glasses pushed up into her hair, as Sarah Whitfield recalled around 2015. The garden was a lively place where the grandchildren were put to work pulling weeds, and Margaret rewarded their efforts with cardamom bread.

Linda Johnson-Parks recalled that her father, Harold Johnson, died in February 2016 at home, with Margaret Johnson beside him. They had been married for fifty-four years. Linda said that Margaret nursed him herself for the last four months and wouldn't hear of anyone else doing it. The morning after his death, Margaret got up at five, made the bread as usual, and sat in the garden wearing her coat. When Linda came out to her, Margaret said, Well. I've done this for other people's husbands a thousand times. Then she cried, which Linda had seen maybe twice in her life.