Fred Johnston, Sr. passed away after a nearly 92-year battle with aging. He would have been the first to tell you that it was hardly the most important moment of his life. And yes, he graduated from college (Lake Forest) and law school (Northwestern) and was in the Army (technically.) But those were not the stories he told about his life, which was filled with other beautiful, heartbreaking, funny, meaningful things.

The day he, Marilyn and the kids set off on a road trip with Dale, the carsick beagle, who proceeded to vomit down the back of Fred’s neck as he drove. (Sound effects are integral to the retelling.)

Following the trail of still-wet footprints that a school-aged Fred Jr. had left in the basement after running through paint, and then seeing their situations reversed as his son followed in Fred Sr.’s footsteps to become a lawyer.

The terror he and his brother Bill felt in their childhood bedroom as something rattled and clanked in the Texas night; the relief that overwhelmed them when they found their father, laughing, tugging on a string attached to a plastic army man hidden in their radiator.

A mild morning in February when he watched Marilyn descend the oak staircase in her ivory satin gown and the rings they exchanged in her parents’ living room. And then, more than half a century later, sitting in that living room in the thick July heat after saying goodbye to her.

Letting his only granddaughter, Leigh, sneak up on him to paint his snow-white hair with blue mascara. In the photo, he is wearing his favorite purple, yellow and green colorblocked polo shirt, eyes wide, throwing his hands up in mock horror as she giggles in the background.

The time as a teenager that he snuck out in the night to paint the town’s parking meters with a candy-apple red swirl like a battalion of barbershop poles.

His grandson, Sam, handing him a custom-printed book. Inside, photos of Sam wearing Fred’s same purple, yellow and green shirt to travel the world, photographing it inside Venetian palaces and atop Swiss mountains so that a part of his grandfather had been there too.

Traveling to the East Coast to see Ben, his youngest grandchild, graduate from NYU and eventually meeting his fiancée, whom Fred proclaimed “a great gal.”

Taking typing in college so that when he joined the Army, he was sent to an office position in California, where he drove Marilyn along the Pacific coast in a convertible instead of to the frontlines in a tank.

His young daughter, Clare, sitting in his lap, giving him the sweetest smile, and then standing up to find that she had been untying his shoelaces with her toes. The realization that she had inherited his sense of humor, for better or worse.

When Rick (the third generation of Freds) held up the phone so that the distance between Iowa and Illinois collapsed and Fred Sr. got to meet his great-granddaughter, Eloise, just a month before his passing. Even though she will not remember him, she will know him.

There were other moments, too, and eventually he had experienced enough of them. Maybe he decided that it was time for us to tell the stories now.

In the words of someone he deeply admired,
T-t-t-t-that’s all, folks.