By Cheryl Boyum Eaton
Fillmore County
Historical Society
Roy Maynard Johnson was born January 11, 1935, to Jens and Hazel Johnson at Moorhead, Iowa. He had two older brothers and a younger sister. His father was a farmer and the family moved to Belmond, Iowa, when Roy was in eighth grade. He took part in band, choir, and FFA. As a young child, he was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes and needed to take insulin injections. He graduated from Belmond High School in 1953 and a statement describing him in his senior yearbook described him as, “A man’s own manner and character is what most becomes him.”
He attended St. Olaf University and shortly before he was to graduate, he lost his sight due to complications of diabetes. He obtained his degree and applied to a school for the blind to learn Braille and to prepare him to be as independent as possible. He said in order to pass, he had to walk in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, alone with just his white cane. He was successful!
He married his wife Shirley, a registered nurse, and together they applied to many schools for a high school history or English teaching position for Roy. Donna Hasleiet, a 1962 graduate of Peterson wrote in a tribute to Roy in 1969, “Peterson was able to hire him only because of the injustice over fifty high school administrations who turned him down flatly during the summer of 1961. They cited school policies that arbitrarily excluded certain kinds of people and partly on personal prejudice that “a blind man cannot teach.” But teach, he did!
According to Donna, if Roy “had any uncertainty about teaching, it did not show, we students had more questions in our minds about how to treat him than he had about how to handle his job.” At first, some students would walk around the room while Roy was lecturing, just because Roy could not see them. But, as we got to know him, we developed a respect for him and any childish activity stopped.
Donna wrote, “He had, without a doubt, the sharpest, most penetrating mind and by educating, he did not mean filling our minds with just facts that we could later return to him on a test. He taught us to think! He was tough and uncompromising. He would challenge, he would prod, but he would never coddle. He said he wasn’t tough enough the first year because he worried about being accepted.”
Accepted he was; students would wait outside his classroom at noon hour just to talk with him. Donna noted, “He laughed with us, talked politics, asked us about our lives and advised us. There was always a genuine interest.” He taught American and World History and English, plus directing class plays and Speech.
His health started to deteriorate in 1968 and he died at Community Memorial Hospital in Winona, Minn., on February 19, 1969, at age 34. He left his wife Shirley and three children: Cheri, Linda and Paul; plus many past students who considered him their inspiration and friend. He touched so many lives with his “can do” attitude. The class of 1969 dedicated their year book to him; “To us, he was more than just a good teacher – he was a close friend.”
Donna shares, “Roy, like all good and decent men would not have wanted to be made something more in death than he was in life. But the fact is that he was so very much in life. He was the personification of Henry Adam’s statement that ‘a teacher affects eternity, he can never tell where his influence stops.’”
References: Tri-County Record newspaper, Belmond, Iowa, High School Yearbook 1953, “A Tribute to Roy Johnson” by Donna Hasleiet Halvorson, and my personal experiences as his student for three years.
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