Leona Johnson, the first born of Charles G. and Edith R. Ash Johnson, was born June 20. 1894 on her grandfather Ash's fifty-seventh birthday. She was a winsome little girl - but always very quiet and reserved. Being the oldest of a large family she had many tasks to perform and lessons often had to be put aside for other work. Her schooling, as a student at school came to a close when she finished the sixth grade, as seventh and eighth grade pupils from Lindon had to go into Pleasant Grove at that time. But she was a good student and had made good use of her time. Her time was now fully occupied, helping mother in the home, so she learned early in life how to cook, wash, iron, keep house and care for children.

In the early summer of 1907, a young Swedish convert, at whose family home father often stayed while on his mission in Sweden, came to stay at our home and work for father on the farm. Leona was thirteen then, but more grown up than most young girls of that age. Gustave Omer, the young convert stayed with us several years, and he and Leona became very good friends. So when he left to go to Salt Lake to work, after his parents came to Utah from Sweden, Leona missed him very much, and though she went out with other young men occasionally she never seemed to care to go the second time. Gus must have felt much the same way, for after about three years he came back to work on the farm for father. He had often come to visit while he was working in Salt Lake and Leona had visited at his home with his folks, so it was no surprise to any of us when they told father and mother they were in love and wanted to be married. This happy event took place just four days after Leona's twentieth birthday, in the Salt Lake Temple.

Leona has always been a devoted wife and mother, doing without many of the things she really needed for herself and for her home, so her children could have the things they wanted. She was always a great lover of little children, and her church activities have been confined to the younger Sunday school classes and in the Ward Primary, where she worked for a number years. She always supported her husband in his different activities as one of the seven presidents of the seventy's quorum and as a counselor in the Sunday School superintendence.

Just the day before her youngest child, Wesley was to be married she suffered a stroke. This was in July 1949. Though it left her badly paralyzed in her right side, she didn't give up and has learned to keep house, and do a very good job of it, with her left hand. She does all her own work except washing and fruit canning, even to making bread, pie and cake and mending clothes on the machine. She is very independent and wants no help from anyone. While going to see their daughter Vaudis in Alpine, one summer afternoon, they were in an automobile accident. Gus was badly shaken up but Leona was badly injured and spent weeks in the American Fork Hospital. Since that time we have marveled at her recovery. Her sickness and inability to do much talking since the "stroke" has been extremely hard on Gus, because he worries so about her being home alone while he is at work at the steel plant. But she never complains and seems to take life as it comes, with a smile. The T.V. Gus bought for her helps her pass the time away without missing the outside interests most people need.

On the evening of December 23, 1957, the angel of Death visited our sister and released her from the pain and suffering she had born for these last eight and a half years. Funeral services were held at the Olpin Sundberg Chapel December 26, and she was buried in the Orem City cemetery.

We all miss her, but our hearts are glad that she could be relieved of the afflictions of this mortal body.