Dr. Johnson and His Legacy

Dr. C. C. Johnson's Drugstore was founded at the beginning of the twentieth century, and was one of the earliest and longest lived "colored" businesses, not only in the city of Aiken, South Carolina but of the surrounding area as well. In order to better understand how this regional institution came about, it is helpful to look at who Dr. Johnson was, and how he came to establish the pharmacy in Aiken which bore his name.

His is a complicated story. Charles Catlett Johnson, Sr. was born in Orange County, Virginia on December 24, 1860. His mother, Mary Jane Reed, was of Scotch parentage, and his father, Louis Johnson, was an Irish immigrant.

After his father died in 1865, his mother married Nicholas Poindexter, a black man, and Charles and his two sisters grew up in Washington, DC, along with children his mother birthed for Poindexter. Throughout his life, he remained a "voluntary" black man, though his blonde hair, blue eyes and fair skin never failed to raise eyebrows.

According to family tradition, young Charles was an ambitious lad who sold newspapers on the streets of Washington to help with his early educational expenses, while his mother ran a boarding house to keep financial ends together. With what must have been a tremendous will to succeed, the young man somehow found the means to continue his education and eventually graduate from the Medical School of Howard University in 1888.

Few accounts survive of those early days, when my grandfather was a struggling young physician, but we have one, passed down by my grandmother, Cecelia Ladeveze Johnson. She told me that immediately after he finished medicine in Washington, Dr. Johnson had few patients, but he thought it important to always appear busy. He consequently developed the habit of walking briskly wherever he went. One day a man asked him, "You seem to be in such a hurry, doctor; is somebody sick?" to which my grandfather answered in his usual businesslike and serious tone of voice, "Somebody is always sick!" and continued on. My grandmother said this story was passed on to her by someone who knew him at the time in Washington, DC.

Likewise, there are few facts known about the early days in Columbia, South Carolina, where the young doctor began his practice at 1103 Plain Street. We know from published biographical records that he was the first physician of color to practice in that city, and that he was the first doctor ever to administer smallpox vaccine there. He was also the first physician of any race to use the x-ray machine in surgical practice in Columbia. In addition, he taught chemistry at Benedict College for a time there in Columbia. We also know that he married Harriet Elizabeth (Hattie) Pearson, and that his first daughter, Annie Pearson Johnson, was born there in Columbia in 1895. Harriet died at 38 years old in 1902.

While he was in Columbia, Dr. Johnson became actively involved in the Masonic Lodge, Prince Hall Affiliation, and, in time, was elected Grand Master of the State of South Carolina, a position he held for 27 years. He had many contacts and friendships in the Lodge over the years, one of whom may have been responsible for his eventual move to Aiken. Family accounts indicate that there was a Dr. George Stoney who encouraged Dr. Johnson to come to Aiken and purchase a drugstore business left vacant at the death of its owner, a Dr. Williams. Doubtless, Dr. Johnson was intrigued by the invitation because there were no physicians of color in turn of the century Aiken, and he may have felt this was a good business move. He could continue his medical practice and also operate a drugstore.

At about the same time, in 1903, Dr. Johnson heard about my grandmother, Cecelia Elizabeth Ladeveze, and was introduced to her and her family in Augusta, Georgia. The two were married on June 22, 1904 and took up residence in a one story home he purchased on the corner of Richland Avenue and Kershaw Street. He also bought the pharmacy, located at the time on Richland Avenue, and opened his medical office in the rear of that small building, near the current location of the Holley Inn.

By 1915, the business had begun to prosper sufficiently to warrant transferring to larger quarters, and Dr. Johnson moved the drugstore and his medical practice to the Commercial Hotel building, where the store's entrance was on Richland Avenue. Family members recall that one of the unique features of this new location was a "new and modern" soda fountain, which afforded customers the opportunity to sit and be served.

The business relocated again in 1920, this time to a new building on Richland Avenue, which had been built by local black contractors, McGhee & McGhee. The new store was located at the southwest corner of Richland Avenue and Newberry Street. Adjacent to it, between the drugstore and what is currently the parking lot behind Palmetto Federal Savings Bank, was the city's "whites only" swimming pool. Children using that pool were among Dr. Johnson's most loyal customers, according to family remembrances.

Dr. Johnson was very much a facilitator in the community, sharing correspondence in 1921 with President Warren Harding on ways to improve community relations in the South. He was also instrumental in getting Aiken Graded Elementary School built in 1926, which brought much-needed relief to the public school system for black children. Dr. Johnson was a supporter of the local public schools and of education in general. Family members recall the day in about 1923 when George Washington Carver lectured at the Aiken County Courthouse and Dr. Johnson took his children out of school so they could hear the famous man speak.

Over the years, Dr. Johnson developed his own talent for oratory, and became a much sought after speaker around the state, at Masonic meetings and other occasions. An imposing character, not so much in statue as in mien, he commanded respect by his bearing. He was very well educated, and it showed. In 1924, he took a trip to Glasgow, Scotland to attend the Ninth Annual World Sunday School Convention, and he used that opportunity to visit many points of interest to one as erudite as he, including the birthplaces of Shakespeare, Robert Burns, and other literary giants, as well as sites that were important in the history of Masonry in Scotland. He saw and sat in some of the largest and oldest cathedrals in Scotland and England, and visited Holland and France. He was particularly impressed by the grandeur that was Paris in 1924.

Dr. Johnson suffered a fatal heart attack in June of 1928 after running up a flight of stairs at home. His oldest child, Mary Jane, known to family and friends as Mamie, who had recently graduated from Howard University in pharmacy, took over the operation of the drugstore while her brothers Free Mason and Charles were off in school at Howard. According to his wishes, Dr. Johnson was buried in Columbia, beside his first wife.

The drug store made another major move in 1940, relocating in the family-owned building on the corner of Park Avenue and Fairfield Street. And finally, in the '50s, it moved for the last time--next door--to the actual corner of the building. I was a part of that move. From this location, at Park and Fairfield, Charles, Mason and Ladeveze operated the business together until Ladeveze's death in 1968; from that point until they closed the doors in the summer of 1984, Charles and Mason ran it alone.

From its earliest days, Dr. C. C. Johnson's Pharmacy was recognized as a unique institution, providing opportunities for young (and not so young) black medical professionals to practice their skills. The family remembers that Inez Raiford, Alvin Lindsey, and Charles Johnson (unrelated) worked there as pharmacists. Among the physicians who had offices over the pharmacy at various times were David M. Scott, Lexius H. Harper, Dr. Johnson's youngest son, Reed Poindexter Johnson, and Ramsey S. Weston.

Dr. Harper deserves a special mention here because he was a cousin of my grandmother, and because he was a very special person to me. I have a copy of an article taken from a publication entitled "The Voice of the Negro," copyrighted by Hertel, Jenkins & Company, Atlanta, Georgia and dated May, 1906. In a rather lengthy article by an S. P. Wadsworth entitled "The Burruss Sanitariam " (sic), the Augusta, Georgia hospital founded and operated by black physician and pharmacist, Dr. George Sanford Burruss, is discussed. From the article, it appears Dr. Burruss was quite an important black physician in Augusta in 1906. One of the first graduates of Atlanta Baptist Seminary (today Morehouse College in Atlanta), he went on to finish Meharry Medical College in Nashville in 1891 and, according to the article, stood "at the head of his profession among colored physicians of Augusta," having amassed considerable money and property. But especially noteworthy in this article is the following mention of Dr. Harper:

Dr. Burruss has been especially fortunate in securing the services and active hearty co-operation of all the colored physicians of Augusta, some twelve in number, although Dr. Lexius H. Harper, of Augusta, a graduate of the Medical Department of Boston University, is his regular assistant and has his office in the same building with Dr. Burruss.

Also, from my earliest years, I had known Dr. Harper was related to us, although I did not understand the true nature of that relationship until much later. But on a more immediate and personal level, I felt a certain closeness to him because of his friendliness toward me. I have no recollection of anything specific he ever said, but his easy-going disposition and soft-spoken manner remain the way I define his personality today.

I have a very vivid mental picture of Dr. Harper from my very early years. It was his habit to come down to the drug store from his office upstairs every day to have a Coke, and during those visits he would often engage my father and Uncle Charles in friendly conversation. This particular scene, frozen in time like a color photographic slide, shows a very light brown skinned man, perhaps no taller than my own 5'5". He stands in the drug store beside the soda box, nattily dressed in a dark three piece suit, a gold watch chain draped across his vest, rearing back and drinking a glass bottled Coca Cola. His neatly trimmed graying hair and mustache, together with his slightly pronounced stomach give him an air of importance indicative of his station in life. Why that particular scene stands out in my mind's eye is a mystery to this day.

But the last memory I have of Dr. Harper alive was on an early December evening in 1947, when my father took me to the Harper home. Dr. Harper was failing fast, and my father was taking me to see him for what would be the last time alive. My memory of the visit begins with us climbing the outside staircase leading to the upstairs bedroom in which Dr. Harper lay. We went inside, and I saw him in bed. I do not remember who else was there, but I seem to recall there was a physician in attendance (possibly Dr. Albert Bostic Miles), along with one or two others in the room, all of whom spoke in hushed tones. He recognized us, but I could tell he was very weak, and I remember feeling so uncomfortable being there. I did not know how to greet this man whom I had been accustomed to seeing so vibrant and healthy before. There were no oxygen tubes, IVs or any other type of medical equipment visible in the room. After my father spoke to him, we remained a few minutes more, and we left. That is substantially all I remember about the last time I saw Dr. Harper alive. By morning he had passed. I distinctly recollect returning to the Harper home a few days later and seeing Dr. Harper's casket open for viewing in what I assume was the living room.

Although Dr. Harper was sorely missed, the drugstore continued to attract black physicians. One of the more colorful physicians who practiced over the store was Dr. David M. Scott. I do not know much about him--only that he was a graduate of Tufts Medical College in Boston and was known as a brilliant doctor. Dark brown-skinned and tall, he smoked cigars and walked with a cane when I knew him in the '40s. My father said he was so brilliant that when he was in medical school he would read a page in Gray's Anatomy once, then tear it from the book and throw it away. Since he could remember everything he read verbatim, he would never have to read a page twice. My father also told me he had a habit in those days of studying while lying in the bathtub.

Then there was Dr. George Thomas Cherry, a dentist who practiced over the drugstore for many years. He was a WWI veteran who obtained his professional education via the GI Bill of that era. Dr. Cherry was our family dentist for many years, and was probably the longest running tenant of the building. He was a light brown-skinned man with pattern baldness and a pronounced stomach who drove Buicks during the 40s, but switched to Cadillacs in his last years. All I know of his origins is that he was born in the rural community known as Old Ellenton (to differentiate it from New Ellenton) in Aiken County, a town which no longer exists because it was swallowed up by the Federal Government when the Savannah River Nuclear Facility came into existence during the 1950s. He was a mainstay in Aiken's Gun Club, a social gathering attended by Aiken's black elite and held once yearly, highlighted by a barbecue and clay pigeon shoot.

 Dr. Lewis S. Porter was a Charleston podiatrist who also had an office over the store, and who managed to keep a loyal patient following in the Aiken and Augusta area throughout the time he made bi-monthly trips to Aiken. He was also a WWI veteran who was schooled under the GI Bill. A brown-skinned man, small in size, Dr. Porter drove Lincolns during the time I knew him in the late '50s, early '60s.

And although the structure is no longer in family hands today, my boyhood friend and Martha Schofield High School classmate, Attorney George A. Anderson, who finished law at South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, remains in his office on the second floor of the building even as I write.

Each of these varied professionals left his mark on the store's personality in his own way. Each made the drugstore a distinctly rich environment, different by far from any other in our community.

In addition to the black professionals who found employment and gained experience at the drugstore over the years, untold numbers of local high school and college students also found summer work at Dr. C.C. Johnson's Drug Store, as the sons continued the tradition started by their father of encouraging young people and helping the community.

Yet, the store remained very much a family operation throughout its history. Dr. Johnson's two eldest sons, Charles Jr. and Free Mason, spent time growing up helping in the business by washing medicine bottles, delivering packages and emptying cuspidors. Like their father, both would continue the proud family tradition of attending Howard University, though they would finish in pharmacy, rather than medicine. And they would become vital elements of the future of the business.

On a More Personal Note: Remembering the Drug Store

"Our stories are inextricably interwoven.
What you do is part of my story; what I do
is part of yours." Daniel Taylor

There isn't a memory of my early childhood that isn't in some way intricately and inseparably interlaced with the life of our family drug store and the lives of my uncles who worked there. And the pharmacy did live in our minds. It had a life of its own, and it affected all of us. My father's life centered around the store, of course, because it was the way he earned his livelihood; but it meant much more than that, even to him: the store gave our family a purpose--a raison d'être--that I have not seen many other families possess, white or black. But of all the second-generation children who were exposed to the business, I think it affected me most, simply because to me it was always there, for as far back as I can remember, and because I spent so much of my childhood there.

As I grew into adulthood and began to accept more responsibility around the store, I found myself being treated more as a junior partner, as a younger brother, than a son or nephew. This feeling strengthened the bond between my uncles and father and me. We shared so much in common, since they, too, had grown up in and around the store, and could not remember when the business didn't play a seminal role in their lives. But now they are all gone. Of the four Johnson men who ran the pharmacy, only I remain, and so it falls upon me to record what it was like growing up with (and in) Dr. C. C. Johnson's Pharmacy.

I was born on the 30^th of January 1941 , in the Johnson family home on the corner of Richland Avenue and Kershaw Street in Aiken, South Carolina. Almost from that very moment, although I had no way of knowing it at so young an age, the store had already begun to affect me, for shortly after my birth, my mother began to work there. She would take me with her as an infant and place me in a cardboard Kotex© shipping carton upon a blanket padded with excelsior in the rear of the store while she worked. Later, when I was able to walk, I was left at home with my grandmother, Cecelia,, who would look after me during the day. What I consider my earliest memory of my mother working is perhaps not so much a memory as it is a tale I've heard my mother tell so often it's nearly impossible for me to decide if I really remember it at all. It centers around a morning in the early forties as she was leaving for work. I cried because I was being left at home, but when my mother turned back to see about me, I reportedly dried my tears and said, rather nonchalantly, "Oh, that's all right. Go on," as I turned away to involve myself in play. That says a lot about how spoiled I was, but it also hints at how close I felt to Mama Cele, my grandmother--so close, in fact, that in the absence of my mother I did very well. But the drug store was to have an even more concrete effect on my life.

The older I grew, the more time I spent in the store. In lower elementary school, my contact was limited to visits, but as I moved on in school, I was expected to do odd jobs around the store, for which I received a weekly compensation. What it amounted to was an allowance, but an earned one, and it came from my father's pocket in those early days. My jobs then consisted primarily of emptying the trash and sweeping the floors down at night. My Uncle Lat (Ladeveze Wilson Johnson) and I would accomplish this latter activity on a nightly basis, and I remember vividly how we would sprinkle Dust-Down compound on the floor prior to sweeping. And after sweeping, we would usually mop the entire store. As memories of those times spent with my uncle come flooding back, I feel the need to digress and write a little about him, since he was such a special person to me. I don't want him to become just another of my relatives without a discernible face, and about whom almost nothing is known.

Ladeveze Wilson Johnson was born May 9, 1910, the fourth child of Dr. Charles C. Johnson and Cecelia Elizabeth Ladeveze, in the same house as his bothers and sisters, the same house in which I would be born 31 years later. My grandmother told me that as a boy, he loved to mimic the preacher at Sunday service in play. He'd use a white handkerchief for effect, wiping his brow as he imitated the preacher's excited rantings during the sermon. She also described him as a sickly, rather delicate child growing up, and this fact possibly accounted for her tendency to be a little more lenient with him in terms of expectations than with her other children, even as an adult.

Uncle Lat was a handsome man, and to my view the better looking of the boys in his family. He attended local elementary and high schools, then briefly attended Paine College in Augusta, Georgia before graduating from South Carolina State College with a bachelor's degree.

The earliest memory I have of him must have occurred very close to 1945, toward the end of the Second World War, when he returned home on furlough. I remember there was much "to do" surrounding that visit, and I also remember looking up at this strange man in his Army khaki uniform, and being told this was my Uncle Lat. When he left for the Army shortly after the war began, I was much too young to know who he was, but as he later settled in after the war, he and I became closer in some respects than he and his brothers were. By way of showing that there was a special bond between us, even when I was only a child, I will relate here something that happened soon after he came home.

While he was in Africa, my uncle contracted malaria, and not long after his return home, he had a malarial attack that put him in bed. He was living in the "home house" on Richland Avenue, Aiken, at the time, and had moved back into his old room--the room that I had occupied while he was away. I was only a boy, perhaps no more than 7 or 8 and living there too, but I well remember him wrestling with the disease and its horrible sweats. Even as sick as he was, though, he was determined that he wouldn't be taken to the hospital. He called for me that day and in his most solemn of faces, made me promise I wouldn't let "them" take him to the hospital. Imagine that...me, a mere boy! What did he think I could do? He had a morbid dread of going to the hospital for some reason. He was delirious, of course, I now realize, but at the time it made me feel so ashamed and guilty when the ambulance arrived in due course and carted him off to Augusta to the VA Hospital. I was devastated to think that I had made a promise to him, in many respects my favorite uncle, that I was unable to keep.

But as time went on and he recovered from his malarial attacks, life for him began to assume some sort of normalcy. On many nights, as I rode with him on the final prescription deliveries of the day, he would talk to me about events and concerns that bothered him that he wouldn't mention to anyone else. In this sense, he treated me like the son he never had. I felt honored that he would speak so frankly to me at such a young age about matters, often personal, and I never mentioned anything he told me if I felt it was something he wanted kept in strict confidence.

Another incident comes to mind as I remember how protective Uncle Lat often was of me. In the early 50s, when a military jet crashed in a field outside of Aiken, he took me with him to see the wreckage. It was some time later that I found out he had deliberately stood between the wreckage and me while the body of the pilot was being removed so I wouldn't see the burned and mutilated corpse. That was an example of how sensitive a person he was.

Uncle Lat stood about 5 feet, 6 inches tall, had straight very dark brown--almost black-- hair, brown eyes, and a fair complexion. In my opinion, he was the more handsome of the four brothers. I suspect he took his features more from the Ladeveze side of the family. He weighed about 155 pounds with a rather slender build, and his weight never fluctuated. He ate what he wanted and never gained a pound. My favorite memory of him finds him reared back, half a cigar clamped in his teeth, with his thin lips pulled up at the corners into a smile of contentment.

Since the Army in some ways had a profound effect on Uncle Lat's life, I should write a little about what I know of his military service, and I should begin by stating that he was drafted into the Army. His "Greetings" letter remained in a desk drawer at the store long after he had returned home, and I remember talking to him at length about what he felt when he received that draft notice. I remember he felt bitter about it; he felt singled out, since he was the only one of the three brothers at the store who was called for service. My father and Uncle Charles were both given deferments, but Uncle Lat had no special job skill or family to offer him such consideration.

Uncle Lat served with the Third Army under Gen. George S. Patton's command in North Africa, driving supply trucks in the Quartermaster Corps. The Army was still segregated at that time, so he served with an all black unit. To my knowledge, he had never taken a life, but he was involved in some scary situations while transporting supplies to the front lines. As for rank, he never rose above corporal, but that was in all likelihood by design. He told me he once refused promotion to sergeant because he did not want the added responsibility. It was clear to me that he was never interested in making the Army a career; like so many millions who were drafted during that war, he simply wanted to serve his time, get it over with and come home.

Once the war was over, he returned to work at the drug store and began to pick up the pieces of his life. How much his personality was affected by his war experiences, I'm not in a position to say, as I only came to know him after the war. I suspect, though, from the stories he told me and from our conversations, that his living through World War II changed him considerably, and I suspect in ways the average person who had never been in combat could neither see nor understand. Maybe he was even more sullen and pessimistic about life after his return because he had seen man's inhumanity to man up close, and his sensitive nature was appalled by what he saw.

But Uncle Lat, just as all of us who worked there, had certain responsibilities at the drug store. He occasionally refilled prescriptions, especially during lunch break, when my father and Uncle Charles were out, but that was something he never liked to do, and he would complain the entire time he was thus engaged. Most often, though, he could be found waiting on customers and restocking shelves. He was also responsible for nightly cleanup, going to the bank, and making home deliveries during the day. He, my father and Uncle Charles usually took turns making home deliveries after closing.

After my father gave up trying to make a go of the photographic portrait studio he ran for a time in the 50s behind our drug store, Uncle Lat took it over, but he, too, was unable to keep it a going concern, and eventually he also gave it up. But he had the studio at the time I first became interested in photography as a hobby as a boy, and it was he who gave me my first instruction in developing film and printing photographs. The studio was rented out after he gave up photography, and converted into a tailor shop operated first by Mr. A. D. Smith, then later by Mr. George Weaver.

The only vice I ever knew my uncle to have was cigars. Uncle Lat loved cigars--particularly King Edward cigars. He would most often not smoke them, however, but gnaw on the same cigar most of the day while he fussed and complained. I do not think it besmirches his memory at this point, some 32 years after his death, to tell the truth as I saw it: he was a chronic complainer. That was possibly the most striking difference between him and his brothers, but for me the jury is still out as to how much of that complaining was justifiable--especially in his final years-- because of his physical condition. Regardless, his often sour attitude and depression kept a dismal cloud over his head. Even so, that fact does not diminish the deep respect I had for him, or the love, and I mention it only because it was his way, and because it goes a long way toward explaining his personality to someone who may never have met him. I firmly believe that he complained so often and so much that the family in general had a tendency to overlook his usually dour attitude and chalk it up to his being "just Lat." What none of us suspected during those years we endured his complaints was that there really was something physically wrong with him. When his symptoms got progressively worse to the point where he was forced to seek medical attention and he began to actually look physically ill, all of us were understandably surprised and alarmed.

For the longest time, none of his doctors seemed to know exactly what was wrong with him, even though he had undergone test after test at the VA Hospital in Augusta. Eventually the diagnosis of multiple myeloma was reached, but this information was initially withheld from him. We (the family, that is) all knew immediately after the diagnosis was made, but were instructed not to tell him, I imagine because no one knew quite how he would react. Well, in due time, he found out anyway, quite by accident. When he heard his diagnosis, he was crestfallen. I remember him commenting to me later, as he literally wrung his hands with the pain of his shingles, "And to think! My own brother...my own brother wouldn't tell me!" He was referring, of course, to his brother, Reed Poindexter Johnson, the physician. As it happened, he accepted his fate better than anyone had imagined, and as we will see later, he was able to accomplish some planning for his family before his death.

But in his earlier, happier days, when he felt like talking, I was always the one with an eager ear for his war stories. Oh, he would hold me spell bound with his tales of war, as he would try to explain to me what it was like to have bullets whistling about him as he ferried supplies to forward areas of battle. He once gave me a small black and white photograph of himself taken in North Africa standing next to a palm tree that had been decapitated by machine gun fire. There he stood, my hero, clad in his khaki uniform and helmet--proof that his war stories were true. I treasured that photograph and carried it with me for years.

Toward the end of his life, when his illness had sapped his strength, I drove him, his wife Dolores and his cherished little girls, Sylvia and Sheila, down to the beach at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. By this time, he understood the true nature of his illness, and he had begun to make plans for the inevitable. He had just bought a Chevrolet--used, but still newer than the one they had before--and was able to insure it so that when he died it would be paid for. The Lincoln Mercury dealer in town knew of his terminal condition, but insured it anyway as a favor to him and to our family. Once seaside, my aunt brought out a picnic lunch, and we sat Uncle Lat in a beach chair facing the ocean. He was so weak by this time he could barely move unassisted, but just being there and seeing the water again made him happy. I still see his gaunt face in my mind's eye as he summoned the biggest smile he could muster. I believe that was the last time my uncle ever left home, except to return to the VA Hospital in Augusta for treatment.

In his final days, Uncle Lat was in constant pain with shingles, and eventually developed the pneumonia that took his life. He died in the Augusta VA Hospital on February 8, 1968, and was buried in the Ladeveze family plot in Augusta. At his funeral, his wife Dolores requested that the large blue and white Masonic symbol placed on top of the coffin while it was open for viewing be placed inside when the coffin was closed. Robert Brooks, who handled the funeral service, complied with her wish, even though this was unplanned, the symbol being a prop intended to remain with the funeral home for reuse. I attended the funeral, but I was not present at the graveside service.

In looking over what I know of Uncle Lat's life in retrospect, I am faced with questions for which I have no ready answers. Did he have regrets about how his life turned out? I do know that his life appeared to have little discernible plan; he often seemed to live it on a day to day basis, and it often appeared from the outside that whatever planning was accomplished came about through the prodding of his wife. I do believe he actually thought of himself as less than successful, most likely because he was never able to make enough money for his family to live in the manner he would have wished, and it seems he blamed everybody else for that singular failure. He thought nobody cared. I often heard him say that, yet I know that was not true. My father also had great difficulty making financial ends meet, and it was only late in life, when he went to work for a time for Smith's Pharmacy chain in Virginia in the 70s, that he was able to get his head above water. Uncle Lat, on the other hand, chose not to explore other options. Aunt Dolores worked as a registered nurse to supplement his meager income, but even so, I know he felt that life had dealt him a raw hand. That feeling, I am sure, at least partially accounted for his cynical outlook on life.

What would he say he accomplished during his lifetime? Here again, I can only speculate. It is not my place to judge from the outside, but I know that what seemed most important to him, especially in later life, was his family--particularly his two little girls. He dearly loved them, and he showed that love readily. A lesson I learned rather late in my own life is that we all do the best we can under the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Certainly, there are other possible approaches we might have taken to situations and other avenues we could have taken in life, but when all is said and done, the fact remains that we did not take those other directions. We did what we did, and in that sense it was the best we could do at the time. In that light, I think Uncle Lat would be happy just knowing he had done the best he could to make his children comfortable and happy during their younger years.

But back to me. As my age increased, so did my responsibilities at the store. By junior high school, I had added to the menial tasks of sweeping and mopping floors that of washing prescription sample bottles for reuse. This is something that would not be done now for what we consider obvious sanitation reasons, but during the 50s we did it, and we were able to reuse those 4 ounce and larger bottles for liquid prescriptions. And when I obtained my driver's license, I also began to share in the responsibilities of going to the post office to check the mail, making bank deposits and prescription delivery. It was about this time, too, that I began to help my father fill prescriptions. I don't remember it being difficult to pick up as a skill. I watched him, asked questions, and had him check my work when I was done. My father was very patient with me, but he was also very thorough, and in a business that does not allow for mistakes, he taught me well. Even though he had been a pharmacist for many years by this time, he always had someone else check his work because he realized something about human nature that always kept him on his guard. Sometimes what you think you see is not what's actually there. No matter how careful you are, you can make a mistake, because what you think you see the first time you look at a prescription, you are likely to see the second time, or the third as you check it. Better to have another set of eyes check your work, just in case what you saw the first time was incorrect. In my subsequent training and experience in Navy pharmacy, I have never had anyone else tell me that, but it's true, and I've never forgotten it. My father was an exceptional man in many ways--very professional and businesslike.

My Uncle Charles C. Johnson, however, was the actual business head of the operation. He was born October 13, 1906, the second oldest child in the family. With the untimely death of his older sister Mamie (Mary Jane Johnson Jones) in childbirth on August 13, 1937, he was left the oldest, and he quietly accepted this role. It was he who kept the books, managed payroll, negotiated bank loans and made most of the business decisions. Even so, he did his share of the other work. He filled prescriptions, did refills, ordered and shelved merchandise, and thoroughly enjoyed interacting with customers. He was in every respect a fine man, but there was one quirk in his personality he evidently inherited from his father, and that was a tendency, at times, to talk over a person's head. He didn't make a habit of it, and I suspect he only did it when he felt mischievous, but he could do it when the mood hit. It was standing knowledge in my family that my grandfather--his father--had a habit of insulting people at times, but he was intelligent enough to do it with class, often without the person realizing he had actually been insulted. Uncle Charles could also do that and get away with it, especially with people who had little education. But he was not by nature malicious, as I understand his father could be at times.

As for his own education, Uncle Charles attended elementary school in Aiken, finished high school at Haines Institute in Augusta, then went off to Howard University, where he and my father finished the pharmacy program together in 1932 with PhC (Pharmaceutical Chemist) degrees. He and my father had their pharmacy licenses prominently displayed over the prescription counter throughout the time the drug store was in operation. Interestingly, their licenses listed the score each made on the Pharmacy Board examination, and I remember Uncle Charles' score being a few points higher than my father's, though I seem to remember both scores being in the middle to high eighties.

Uncle Charles was also a Master Mason and, as his father had been before him, was active in the Royal Arch and Masonry at the Consistery level (32^nd Degree). He was masterful in his command of Masonic ritual and a true joy to observe at meetings. Over the years, he had held virtually every office the Lodge afforded, including Past Master, and he was a member of the Order of the Eastern Star. Ironically, and as history has a way of repeating itself, I often found myself driving him to his Masonic meetings in Columbia as a youth, just as he had done for his father.

I never knew Uncle Charles to have a hobby or an avocation, unless it was carpentry. He enjoyed building things with wood, and he seemed happiest when he was working with his hands, often involving himself in repair projects around the store. To me, at least, it seemed he would rather do that than fill prescriptions.

By way of general physical description, Uncle Charles stood about 5 feet, 6 inches tall, had straight dark brown hair as a young man, brown eyes and a fair complexion. He was just a little heavier than Uncle Lat, but he, too, didn't have to worry about his weight. I estimate 165 pounds at most. Of the four male children, I believe his facial features most closely resembled those of his father. Especially was this true of his nose.

Uncle Charles had property in Graniteville, South Carolina, about 6 miles or so from Aiken, and I would often go with him in the 50s to see Nettie Brooks, the huge black woman who ran a beer garden on his property. It was truly a rough and rowdy crowd she catered to, and it was in her nightclub I first heard down home, gutbucket blues as it emanated from the 78 rpm records on her jukebox. If Uncle Charles was ever uncomfortable during those visits, it certainly didn't show. I suspect he rather enjoyed those brief encounters with the seamy side of life, I imagine because it was so different from the life he led.

Uncle Charles' children, Charlese and Charles, never took a serious interest in working in the store. His wife Mabel, on the other hand, became more actively involved in the business as time wore on. In the final years of the store, she threw herself wholeheartedly into the collection of accounts, delinquent and otherwise, much to the annoyance of many customers. The store lost business during those years because of her behavior, but Uncle Charles seemed unable to control her. I often found myself sympathizing with him, simply because he was such a nice person, and she seemed to take pleasure in walking all over him at every opportunity. It was not unusual for her to come through the side door of the pharmacy shabbily dressed in one of Uncle Charles' old shirts and wearing a pair of Uncle Charles' old slippers two sizes too large for her feet, and for her to pick a verbal fight with anyone around. In incredulous contrast, her command of English was always precise and correct, indicative of the Master's she held in Education, and she could be very amicable when it suited her purpose, although she was most often extremely difficult to get along with. I tried to limit my contact with my dear Aunt Mabel.

Uncle Charles, however, was as completely different from his wife as night from day. He had a golden heart and an overall positive outlook on life. And as my godfather, he was always very supportive of me. He took the time to encourage me in activities like the Boy Scouts, for example, and he sat on the examining board when I went up for Star rank. When I wanted to join a local unit of the Civil Air Patrol, he took me to the person in charge of that unit, even though we both knew the Patrol was white only at the time, and I wouldn't have a chance of getting in. That particular day, he put the man on the spot, making him explain exactly why I wouldn't be allowed to join. I respected him for having that courage. It was also he who took me in for my driver's license test after I failed parallel parking the first time, and I can't say with certainty today that he wasn't responsible for me getting my license. He personally knew the examining officer. And Uncle Charles was later instrumental in encouraging me and standing by me when I joined the Blue Lodge, then later the Royal Arch Masons and the Consistery.

In those early years, being around him was truly like having a second father. He called my father "Make," and me "Little Make" at first, them simply "Make" as I grew older. Always ready with a smile and hearty greeting for friends, he was a pleasant person to be around. He enjoyed smoking cigarettes from the earliest I can remember, but unlike my father, who stopped smoking cigars when I became old enough to notice, Uncle Charles continued to smoke until about a year before he died. I've often thought to myself what a useless undertaking it was for him to give it up at his age. He died shortly after quitting, on August 20, 1987, but not from the consequences of smoking--from prostate cancer instead.

Before I leave Uncle Charles, there is one incident that comes back to me from the mid 1960s, worth mentioning because it is one of the more dramatic examples of service he and the store rendered to the community over the years. Owing to the drug store's location, it was about three blocks from the beginning of Aiken's usual parade route, and this particular 4^th of July morning most of our customers were either in the front of the store looking out, or outside awaiting the parade. I had gone upstairs just outside Dr. Cherry's dental office to stand at a glass-paned door that overlooked the street so I'd have a better vantage point. Shortly after the parade began at 11 a.m., the procession came into view, with marching bands and decorative floats. One float in particular, with a Civil War theme, even had a real cannon on board which the attendants were stoking with gunpowder. As chance would have it, just as it passed the store, the cannon fired, letting out a tremendous report. In a split second, the resulting tongue of flame leapt all the way to the float immediately in front of the cannon, where a waving "Miss somebody" sat smiling on her display. In the batting of an eye, the girl's dress went up in flames, and she bounded off the float and ran, screaming hysterically, into the drug store. Uncle Charles, in a remarkable display of clearheadedness, grabbed a blanket from somewhere (I still have no idea where), wrapped the girl in it, flaming dress and all, and put out the fire, thus saving her from extensive burns. As far as I know, he never even got a thank you for that act of heroism. It certainly never made the local paper. I dare say nobody remembers that incident today, but it lives on in my memory as a special day in the life of the store

The final partner in the business, to whom I have only made brief allusions, was my father. I saved him for last because he was the one person most responsible for providing me with this drug store experience, and the one to whom I am most grateful.

My father was born Free Mason Johnson on October 2, 1908, in Aiken, South Carolina, the third child of Cecelia Elizabeth Ladeveze and Dr. Charles C. Johnson, Sr. A small statured man with noticeably small feet (size 5), he stood about 5 feet 4 inches tall, had brown eyes, weighed about 130 pounds, and had very dark brown hair. He had lost most of the hair on the top of his head by the time he was nineteen years old.

My father attended the public schools of Aiken, and graduated from Martha Schofield Normal and Industrial School in the class of 1928. In that same year, and on the threshold of the great Depression, his father died. In the fall of that year, he headed off to Howard University to join his older brother Charles who was already one year into his studies in that school's pharmacy program. The two, who were always inseparable companions, waited tables in Washington, DC restaurants and pooled their meager resources to make ends meet.

As mentioned earlier, the brothers graduated together in 1932, after which they made their way back home to work in the family pharmacy. Their oldest sister Mamie (Mary), who had earned her pharmacy degree earlier, and who kept the drug store running while the boys were off in school, welcomed them home.

On April 16, 1939, my father married my mother, Rosalie Nelson, of Augusta, Georgia, and brought her home to the house on the corner of Richland Avenue and Kershaw Street. It was there, in what we all affectionately called "the home house," we three children were born. I, the eldest, was born in 1941, followed by sisters Ethel Julia in 1946 and Margaret Rose in 1949. We all--my grandmother, our immediate family and my Uncle Lat, when he returned from the war--lived in that same house until my father moved my mother, sisters and me into our new home on Williamsburg Street in 1954.

My mother worked in the drug store for a time after I was born, but soon looked around for other employment. She eventually returned to school, finished college and began a teaching career that ended with her retirement as a reading teacher with over twenty years experience in the classroom.

Except for the period 1965 to 1975, when he worked as a pharmacist with Peoples Drug Stores in Hampton and Newport News, Virginia, my father spent his entire working life involved in the family drug store. His brother Charles and he operated the store alone during WWII, until Uncle Lat returned from overseas.

In the early 50's, photography became an avid interest for him, and my father went off to take the professional photography course at Winona Falls, Indiana. At its completion, he returned to Aiken and opened the previously mentioned studio behind the drug store. Most of his work was in black and white photography, and he found a market in black funerals, portraiture and trotters at the local racetrack. My mother assisted by hand-coloring some of his portraits in those days. By all accounts and from examples of his work I've seen, he was good at it, but after a few years he found it unprofitable, and began to concentrate once more on the pharmacy for his livelihood.

My father was also active in the Masonic Lodge. As mere boys, he and my Uncle Charles would drive their father to his Masonic meetings around the state, beginning for the both of them a long and close relationship with the Lodge that was to last into their final years. Although they often attended Masonic functions together, they joined separate lodges in Aiken. In Dickinson Lodge No. 314, my father was a Past Worshipful Master, as well as a member of Effingham Chapter No. 10 of the Order of the Eastern Star, and he stood with me during my own initiation into the Lodge.

My father was an ardent churchgoer. He maintained an affiliation with his mother's church, Union Baptist in Augusta, during the time Mama Cele was alive and after, and even though he joined Friendship Baptist in Aiken in 1975, he kept in touch with Union. He served as deacon in both churches.

In his final years, my father suffered from Parkinson's disease, a neuromuscular disorder that robbed him of his freedom and independence. It was this disease that weakened him such that he was unable to resist the pneumonia that finally took his life at age 86.

Someone once told me they had never heard my father utter an unkind word about anybody. That doesn't surprise me. If there is a legacy he would truly appreciate, I think it would be to be remembered for the way he lived his life. Always with a ready smile, this quiet and refined man was as meticulous in cultivating the courteous manner in which he treated everybody, regardless of station in life, as he was in filling prescriptions.

And so his legacy to me will always be the excellent example he set for me throughout the time I knew him, and which I still find occasion to use daily as a yardstick when measuring my own reactions to life. Whenever I have a moral issue to be decided, I ask myself what he would have done under similar circumstances, and I immediately have my answer. I well remember how he seemed to know instinctively when to remain silent, rather than take a chance on saying something that may have been offensive or unflattering, a trait I am often hard-pressed to emulate.

In course of time, however, and over my objections, I found myself required to spend more time at the store as I got older. I think what I resented most was that I was expected to be there everyday, including weekends. As the business ran seven days a week, Saturday and Sunday were like any other days, except that the hours were reduced on Sunday since we closed for church. My father and I had many strong discussions about this, but to no avail. At my age then, all I could see was that my friends had the weekend to play, while I was made to work. Only in my later years did I begin to understand the importance of lessons learned at the store.

As my high school years appeared, my store responsibilities increased until I was doing virtually everything that my father and uncles were doing, and I was put on salary. I was still working seven days a week, but I managed to find time to do some of the things "average" teenagers do, and it was during this time that my father bought me my first car, a 1951 Henry J. For the uninitiated, the "Henry J." appellation derived from the first name and middle initial of the car manufacturer, Henry J. Kaiser, and it was, indeed, a Kaiser, though it was the little sporty one with a leather covered continental spare on the trunk. It was turquoise in color, and what made it truly unique was that it had been fixed by its previous owner so that the gearshift lever could be easily transferred from the right to the left side of the steering column. This would reverse the gearshift pattern, of course. My father was unaware of this feature, or that I would sometimes change the gearshift until one morning he was in a hurry and needed to use my car to go to work. He got in, and had already put the key in the ignition when he saw what I had done. That was one of the few times in my life I've actually seen my father get visibly upset. Needless to say, I quickly put the lever back in its accustomed position and never again did I change it if I had the slightest notion my father might need the car.

As high school ended for me and I went off to Morehouse, I spent holidays and the summers I wasn't in summer school at the drug store. To me during those times, the store was a safe haven, without the trials and pitfalls of college and the big city of Atlanta. During my last year of college, at Paine in Augusta, I was able to commute to classes during the day and spend the afternoons and nights at the store. That school year, 1963-64, should have been my last year of active involvement with the pharmacy, but it wasn't, because even as I began to teach, during school year 1964-65, I found some time to stop in from time to time. My involvement finally ended when I went off to the Navy in 1971. From then on, I would stop by to visit when I was in town and help with the prescription load if it was backed up, but for all practical purposes, my days in the drug store were over.

After 52 years of dedicated service to the community as registered pharmacists and businessmen, my father and uncle retired in 1984. They liquidated the drug store's assets and closed the door on a family owned business that had run continuously for 80 years.

I look back on those years--all those years when I was so closely bound to the family pharmacy as a way of life--and it brings back a certain nostalgia that I couldn't imagine I'd ever feel during my early years, when I was forced to spend so many of my after school hours there. Time, as it usually does, brings about a change in attitude. When I think of all the valuable lessons for life that I learned there, when I think of how much I am blessed to remember about my uncles with whom I shared that legacy, I feel eternally grateful. I'd like to think that somewhere--maybe on another plane of existence--the drug store still lives. I know it will always remain vivid in my memory, and close to my heart. I've had a unique chance to live that bit of history that was Dr. C. C. Johnson's Drug Store, and for that I'm grateful.

Note: Some of the historical information dealing with the founding of the drugstore was garnered from an article entitled "Aiken's Golden Years," written by Roddie Burris and published in the Aiken Standard and Review (newspaper) on February 20, 1994.

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Last Reviewed: 28Dec11