We Got Johnny...

Fall 1952 – Juliesse & Johnny out for a stroll with Mother

August 1952 – Julie, Karl, Kristi, Baby Johnny

I was almost four years old when Mother went to the hospital to have our new baby. She was gone for what seemed to me like about a month. But I was used to being the baby of the family and I missed my mother very, very much.

After a day or two of her being gone, I remember Daddy came home from being with her at the hospital and told us we had a new little brother. His name was going to be John Albert Koerner.

I have one faint memory of talking on the phone sometime during that week to Mother about ‘baby Johnny’ and then my next memory is, I remember standing in the kitchen next to Karl and Kristi while we watched the door open. The sun was bright and blinded my sight except for a silhouette of Mother coming through the doorway holding something in her arms. I felt Daddy pick me up and set me down on a kitchen chair and then I felt a bundle being laid down into my arms. It was he whom I came to refer to as - Baby Johnny!

I must have been holding my breath while this happened, because through the years since this major event in my life, every time I recall this precious treasured memory – Daddy lifting me up and a warm bundle being placed in my arms - I hold my breath. Karl and Kristi must have been asking to hold the baby, too, because I faintly remember hearing Mother say, “She’s so young, let her be first.

Other memories I have regarding my adoration for this new little doll of mine include 1) sneezing when baby powder fluffed in my nose; 2) running down the hallway of our house with a clean diaper in my hands; 3) lifting the front wheel of Johnny's buggy up over a curb; 4) holding my hands over Johnny's face to shade his eyes from the sun and 5) laying my face on the floor next to the bedroom door where Johnny slept so I could be the first one to hear him wake up from his nap.