Lois Annette Johnson

Lois Annette Johnson, the last of the three children of John Clarence Diah Johnson and Lillian Elvira Brown, was born 9 November 1922, probably on her parents’ farm near Manteca, San Joaquin County, CA, but if not there, then in Manteca itself. She arrived in the world much later than her siblings. The name Lois was unprecedented in the family as far as is known. Her middle name came from her maternal grandmother, Annette Potter.

Lois’s childhood involved a certain amount of upheaval. Her older sister Ruth’s marriage in the late 1920s was short-lived, and so even though Lois was technically the youngest of the family, she spent most of her elementary-school years sharing a household with a niece, Phyllis Wampler, who was less than five years her junior. On a less happy note, Lois’s great uncle William Osborne Moore, who had been her father’s foster father, died when Lois was only eight. This was the first of three losses in quick succession. Three months later, maternal grandmother Annette Potter Brown -- who had recently come to Manteca after having spent many years in San Jose, CA -- succumbed as well. Six months after that, Clarence Johnson passed away at less than fifty years of age. Inasmuch as Lois’s maternal grandfather Oscar Elisha Brown had passed away before her birth, she spent her adolescence and teen years with only her brother Lloyd to serve as the older-male kinfolk figure in her day-to-day life.

With Clarence’s death occurring at the nadir of the Great Depression, the Johnsons had a challenging time making ends meet. Lloyd seems to have tried to maintain the farm, but this was probably not so much a case of keeping a money-making venture going as being unable to find a buyer at first in such grim times. At some point during the mid-1930s, Lillian, Lloyd, and Lois took refuge with Theresa Branson Moore, Lois’s great aunt and foster grandmother, whose home was in the town of Manteca. Ruth came and went from the household during the decade, gone for a period while married to second husband Howard F. Akins. At those times when Ruth was in residence, she contributed income as a bookkeeper. Somehow the family made it through. By the late 1930s, Theresa was so old and weak she gave up her long-time house on W. Yosemite Avenue. Lillian, Lloyd, and Lois -- Ruth having moved out again, this time for good -- bounced around for a while, spending at least a few months in Sacramento before finding fresh accommodations back in the rural fringe of Manteca in Summer Home district, where the farm had been. Lloyd was employed as a welder. Lois probably worked as well at a job in her late teens, but what she did is unknown.

Lois married 25 April 1942 at age nineteen and became a mother at twenty-one. The second of her two children was born two years later. Her husband was Charles Homer Whelan, born 8 August 1919, son of Howard Newberry Whelan and Lucy Sergeant. Howard and Lucy were natives of Michigan, and with the exception of Charles, all of their kids had been born there. Howard and Lucy had spent a brief interval in Spokane County, WA -- Charles’s birthplace -- then had moved to California, arriving in 1921. The Whelans had then spent many years in Manteca. Lois and Charles had probably known each other for years before they became romantically involved. At the very least, various members of their two families had undoubtedly been encountering one another over a substantial span of time.

Lois and Charles were married during his hitch in the U.S. Army. He had joined up in early 1941. This undoubtedly meant he was often absent from home during the first year or two of the marriage, which helps account for the delay in starting their family. Lois spent this interval in Stockton. It seems likely she shared the home of her brother and mother, who are known to have relocated to Stockton -- the “big city” of San Joaquin County -- in approximately 1944. Once normal civilian life became possible, she and Charles settled in Manteca, where they remained until their kids grew up. The 1950 census shows her brother Lloyd in the household as well, though that does not seem to reflect a long-term situation.

Lois did not limit herself to being a housewife. Instead, she worked for thirty-five years for Pacific Gas and Electric, serving some, or most, of that time as an executive secretary. Charles meanwhile worked for Spreckels Sugar Company. He was a personnel manager. This was no small role. Spreckels Sugar was the single largest employer in the Manteca area. Many males of the Branson-Ousley clan were employed at various times by Spreckels, though Charles was a rarity in that he had an office job. Most of Lois’s kinfolk worked out in the beet fields in some capacity or another, usually as supervisors or as truck drivers.

At some point, Lois and Charles divorced. The event seems to have taken place in the first half of the 1960s, and certainly was finalized no later than 1965, because that was the year Charles married second wife Betty Jean Tatum (1930-2001), former wife of Myrle Smithson. (They divorced in 1973.) As a single woman, Lois went back to Stockton. She did not marry again. Charles remained in Manteca. He retired from Spreckels Sugar in 1983. He passed away in a local convalescent home 3 May 2003.

Late in life Lois suffered from cirrhosis of the liver and colon cancer, the latter requiring surgery when she was seventy. In ill health, she spent the last two years of her life in Oceanside, San Diego County, CA in the Oceana retirement community. During her final days her daughter lived with her. Lois passed away of heart failure from coronary artery disease 2 April 1999 at her home in Oceanside. Her body was cremated five days later.

Descendants of Lois Annette Johnson

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