My Remarkable Journey by Katherine Johnson

Author:Katherine Johnson [Johnson, Katherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amistad
Published: 2021-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Tomorrow Comes

For the last eight days of December 1956, I hit the pause button on my life. I took time away from work to grieve the loss of my life partner. But I knew that I could not allow myself or my girls to stay locked in the same sad place. Tomorrow kept coming.

When school resumed in January, I escorted Joylette, Connie, and Kathy to Carver High, thanked the staff for their tremendous support, and told the principal that the girls were not to get any pity or special treatment in the days ahead. Jimmie and I had been preparing them for college, and our high expectations would not change. I wanted our daughters to understand that sometimes life hurts, but we have to keep moving forward.

The girls already had chores, but they pitched in even more, helping me with the cooking, cleaning, and ironing at home. They insisted that I must have calculated the exact time it took them to do every chore on their lists to the moment that I walked back into our door each evening. Of course, that is an exaggeration, but I make no apologies. Staying busy is good, and all three of them stayed busy with school and church activities. At school, Joylette was a member of New Homemakers of America, a Negro girls’ home economics club that would merge years later with the all-white Future Homemakers of America. She had served as a state officer of the club in the ninth grade and even forged lifelong friendships with some of the other officers. Joylette also was a band member and accompanist for the school choir; Kathy was a cheerleader; and Connie, who had asthma and could not overexert herself, signed up as cheerleader team manager so she could travel with Kathy to the games. All three of the girls attended monthly Presbyterian Youth Fellowship group meetings, led by our pastor’s wife, Mrs. Alice Rollins, in the basement of our church. Though the girls sometimes complained that the group was more like an extension of school than a fun fellowship, the young people who participated were exceptional, and they would accomplish great things in the years ahead. Among them were Dr. Carolyn Winstead Meyers, former president of Jackson State University and Norfolk State University, who had been an engineering major at Howard University and was one of the students I mentored; Barbara Starks Favazza, a physician; Cynthia Davis, a jazz singer in Cancún; Eugene Butts, a minister who is now deceased; and a number of educators and other dynamic people.

Since Jimmie and I both were musicians, music was a big part of our girls’ lives as well. In addition to playing in the orchestra at school, the three of them also sang in the youth choir at church. The choir director was the musical director at Huntington High School in Newport News, and he taught Connie and Kathy piano in private lessons for a brief while at his home. Joylette had demonstrated an interest and aptitude for the piano as early as five years old, so I began teaching her at home.

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