SEND FLOWERS
Obituary
Jimmy Darrel Johnson
Was born Dec 26th 1947 in Melvin KY to Joseph and Frances Johnson. He grew up with 6 siblings and many cousins that he loved very much. My Dad was known as the wild one. I could probably write a book on the stories that he has told and that were told on him. I’ll tell you one of my favorites, he was in elementary school and they installed a shiny new Coke machine. Somehow all the Coke bottles would be gone but no money in the machine. Well they started to watch and see what was going on.. guess who figured out how to get the cokes without paying? The school called Coke and they were really confused on how he did it that they sent one of the big wigs out for him to show how he did it so they could fix the problem. They were impressed with this little boy who told them .10 was hard to come by. He loved to tell that one.
Another one of my favorites was how his big sister Joann would babysit and have to tie him to a chair to keep him home from running the hills. He was a handful but everyone loved him.
A few years later he in listed in the United States Army. Spent time in Korea and a few years after that he moved to Michigan where he met the love of his life Donna who just so happens to be from the same place he’s from in Ky. They married and had two children (me)Wendy and Eric. One of my most precious memories is going to breakfast and toys r us on Saturday mornings. Just the two of us.
He was a crane operator then drove a steel truck for American steel until an injury put a stop to that. He was a bit of a gambler and decided he wanted to get a race horse and train it. He did just that for over 20 years. Many wins under his belt he was one of the best race horse trainers around. That love of horses rubbed off on Eric and he too had race horses. Dad was and will always be his hero.
After he retired he became the best Papaw babysitter to the apple of his eye Alexis (AKA) Turtle Almost every picture we have of that pretty blonde curly haired girl he was right there with her. There was no other place he’d rather be. A few years ago they moved in across the street from us. That made us so happy! Almost Everyday Jenna and I made our way over to see him, and 9 out of 10 times we would wake him up from napping in his chair he would joke and say he hasn’t had a good nap since moving to Woodhaven. He loved every minute of it.
Almost 2 years ago him and Mom decided to buy our house and we were to stay with them until we found a new house. Well.. almost 2 years later we are still there and I’m so glad that the perfect house we were looking for hadn’t come along yet. I had all this time with the first best friend. Jenna had almost 2 years of memories with her Papaw being in the same house. They shared many laughs and played many tricks on each other.
My Daddy will be so missed by his family, friends, friends that became family, the 3 fur babies Max, Daisy and Belle that he would always feed too many treats to, Motor City casino and especially me.
