Lucille Marie Johnson

Nov 10, 1919 - Jun 9, 2016

Lucille Marie Johnson, 96, died June 9, 2016, at her home in Kokomo.
Born Nov. 10, 1919, in Pratt County, Kansas, she was the daughter of Tennessee native Edna Lucinda Rutherford and her husband, retired Major League Baseball player Ben Blackmon.
She had two younger siblings, Ben David and Elizabeth (Betty) Ruth Blackmon. The family moved to a farm near Everton (Boone County), Arkansas, then later, during the Great Depression, to a piece of land on the Clinch River in East Tennessee.
There, Lucille met neighbor and classmate J. Will Johnson, namesake of J. Will Taylor, his father Bishop L. Johnson's colleague in the Tennessee legislature.
J. Will stayed out of school for four years in order to graduate with Lucille. After graduating from Horace Maynard High School in 1939, they married. Meanwhile, the TVA seized their families' farms and dammed the Clinch to create Norris Lake, the TVA's first.
Ben and Betty both served in the U.S. Army, Ben as a paratrooper and Betty as a WAC. Ben died while a POW in Germany.
J.Will served in the Navy in the Pacific Theater and returned home an amputee. Lucille farmed, taught school and cared for her family during the war. Lucille and J. Will had three children, a daughter, Sharron, and two sons, Theodore (Ted) and Keith.
The family moved to Kokomo in 1951, where J. Will worked for George's Electronics. He died in 1979. Lucille initially worked for Kresge's and later at Delco Electronics, where she retired at 74. Her son, Ted, passed away in 1988.
Lucille was a lifelong reader, seamstress, gardener, puzzle worker, good deed doer and loving parent and grandmother.
Survivors include her son, Keith Johnson, Kokomo; daughter, Sharron Croddy, Huntsville, Arkansas; nine grandchildren; 14 great-grandchildren; and one niece.
She was preceded in death in 2012 by a sister, Betty Garrard.
A graveside service will be held at 3 p.m. June 12, at the New Loyston Cemetery near Loyston (Union County), Tennessee. Arrangements by Cooke-Campbell Mortuary, Maynardville