Michael Johnson and Metta Johnson

00:00 Alright. Hello everybody. I am Michael Johnson. I am 41 years old and and Atlanta Georgia and I am interviewing my mom Matt Johnson.

00:15 And I am Metta Johnson and I am 74 years old and I'm

00:24 Sorry, my husband just walked in we have to be quiet.

00:33 And I'm in Atlanta, Georgia.

00:38 And my I'm speaking with my son.

00:43 That was not very good and it's January 9th 2021. And so I thought we've been picking with some questions about you growing up. So when and where were you born?

01:04 I was born in Atlanta Georgia in 1946, which was a very interesting time to be born in the South. It's the time of the beginning of a lot of change you grew up here in Atlanta. All right. I did I've never lived anywhere else. But what was it like growing up in Atlanta?

01:32 Well, I grew up upper middle class.

01:37 Upper class which ever we had money. We had a full-time maid that was part of our family the cost of Mary.

01:53 And it just seems natural.

01:56 But I know I was told and I do remember she would go with us on our vacations and I didn't understand why she couldn't go into the restrooms that we went into she could use the water fountain that we used and she couldn't go into the restaurant and I called her every is it was very young at the time. And so when she couldn't go in the restaurant with his I just sat in the car with her and said y'all can bring my food out to me if they won't let Mary come in. I'm not going to go in so from a very young age.

02:39 That type of thing never made sense to me the cell I believe is always very slow at social change, but actually the whole country was so

02:53 As the immigration began in Earnest this time. I most a hundred years after the Civil War.

03:07 There was a lot of uproar a lot of Lester Maddox to a restaurant bench really became our governor restaurant and pickaxes, which I never heard of before not letting blacks in his restaurant because he owned it and that was his right and I remembered those issues the Martin Luther King the marches and all that started in these issues.

03:45 Lester Maddox in other store owners starting and I remember my daddy and I talkin about those a lot when we would trust Mary and when she wasn't in the car back and forth as we drove over to her house picture of every morning my daddy had a very kind.

04:08 Heart and he was born in 1912. So course he is in bright Hill a change to so it's interesting to talk to him about

04:20 What was happening about if the old felt right what was happening that it was time for change?

04:31 So and then I went to private school some private school. She went to in the mid 50's.

04:41 Because of immigration but I went to public school up until I was in 8th grade, but I actually was smart. So private school that much for smart people. I was a went to the University of Georgia the bright School.

05:08 And then I went to the University of Georgia in 1964, and they had just integrated about 2 years before that where they had a black female and black male that entered the school. So it was a very interesting time of change.

05:30 So that's that's how I grew up and then watching watching the South change the country change. We're still having so many of these issues which is again raised its very very ugly had and

05:50 Right now in 2021. I'm very.

05:54 Proud to be from the state of Georgia who slept for the first time in Lord knows when

06:02 Putting President Biden President Biden of the top and electing to Democratic senators that will ruin us. So, you know, it's 74 I feel very encouraged.

06:22 That we're making this progress. I remember you saying the other day. I think you said it was granddaddy. That would really be happy to see where things are. What was his name? Again? He did not have a middle name. I did not have a middle name that always thought that was funny and tell the story about what we learned the other weekend about where I live and Grandpa was born in 1912 and I had always understood that he lived in Ansley Park, which is very wonderful area of Atlanta, but

07:13 Nephew of mine Frederick much had saved some letters from my daddy's brother Carl Goldsmith who fought in the first world war and unfortunately, he was killed after the Armistice but it had not gotten to the front lines yet, and he was killed but he wrote his mother wonderful letters while he was in the Army and and I could see where the address where daddy grew up and it was on Piedmont Avenue and you live on Peabody Avenue and a condo and so I looked it up on

08:02 Google Maps or something like that and you and I looked at it together and your condo takes up a whole block now and right across a very small stream is actually where daddy house was.

08:21 Believe it was 134 Piedmont Avenue, and it's if there's like four stories high rise now. Okay. Yes, and you and I both and all of her family are very spiritual as you said our family must have a spiritual Gene and that was just good cuz I felt like it's like like the Native American thought of land.

09:00 Hours and energy in and of itself and that Daddy kind and loving energy.

09:11 What's the part of where you live that was wonderful to talk about your mom?

09:23 My mom was born in Miami, Florida and her Father Joseph little

09:35 Died in an explosion. He works at the gas company down there with mother was 9 months old.

09:42 My mother is Marion, Virginia little

09:49 Goldsmith

09:50 Her mother is at birth to her in Miami. Florida was Metta sweet little from Owego New York. Grandmother was very instrumental in my life, and I'm named for her and

10:11 That's very special. She lived with us my life. So it in mother. I don't know. If one time what time grandmother moved to Atlanta cuz she's actually from a week of New York and Mary just a little loose in Pennsylvania, and I guess he was an engineer. So I assume that's why I ended up in Miami and probably I think about 1906 grandmother was born in

10:45 1889

10:50 And so, you know, I'm wish I had done this with my grandmother and interview and I wish I done it with my mother. So mother grew up most of her life here.

11:06 In Atlanta, she was an only child my grandmother.

11:12 Remarried in Atlanta

11:16 And

11:19 Believe when mother was about hen grandmother hired Mary our person that was are made as she called him Dad. She was fifteen had worked in the fields in South Carolina and came to work for grandmother as a domestic helper in

11:50 I thought that it was 1915. So I guess mother was younger in 10 that would know 1915. She was born in 1998 when grandmother was 10.

12:06 Yes roundabout. Yes. I remember Mary as a kid. I remember y'all having her come over sometimes and she would cook. So yeah, that's three generations of connection that she had with her family in 6 months apart in 1974, and she stayed and worked at the house at my brother and sister live there. And then when that house after mother died and didn't really was so each of us older siblings hurt her and we're sure that she has taken care of and she eventually retired to a personal care home and

13:00 Interesting Lee went into Grady Memorial Hospital which back then was known to wear black people wouldn't actually had two sections of a hospital.

13:11 And I have become a nurse by that time and they called me because they had my number and I went to the hospital to see her and she was quite a by this time and she obviously had ovarian or even a mutual cancer and they wanted to do surgery on her and she was dying and I just absolutely raise hell until they agreed not to do so. She didn't want it. She was in pain and at that time I was working in hospice and I I said y'all have to give her something for her pain and she needed oxygen and she could still talk and she talked to me and that's what she wanted to do. So I felt

14:11 Really good that and blessed to be able to be there at the end of her life.

14:20 As she had been with my family all of our life almost. When did you did you know when you were a kid that you're going to grow up to be a nurse? What did you think when you're a kid you would grow up to do?

14:36 You know, I never wanted to be a nurse. I didn't like throw-up it always maybe can and that's all you think about nurses and

14:50 Beatles I don't like them.

14:57 And and at that time as I was growing up nurses by and large did not go to college. They went got a diploma from a teaching hospital and I knew I think my goals of growing up my family was extremely dysfunctional and I wanted to meet somebody

15:24 That I could love them that love me and that we could love each other be happy have a wonderful family.

15:35 And I didn't.

15:38 I think I really just thought about having children and being a homemaker now, obviously a planning on going to college which I did and I did like everybody did Evans email in 1964. You send out to be a teacher and Lord knows that is the last thing on Earth, but I did not finish college at that time because I had met my husband Clyde William Johnson jr.

16:13 When I was

16:15 16 were you still in high school when I was at Westminster and he was at Georgia Tech. I was a junior.

16:29 He wasn't Georgia Tech and back. Then the fraternities would get Rush girls from fraternity Rush from

16:43 The local high schools and we would be assigned so you weren't there. Just putting guys and girls together you had a specific person that you were supposed to go to a rush party with and so my first date your daddy by Johnson was a blind date April 6th 1960.

17:10 3

17:12 And so they assigned high school girls for date for the college guys. Alright dominantly male is not all male and they would get high school girls.

17:31 Or girls from Agnes Scott, which is the girl's school a girls college in Decatur Georgia part of Greater Atlanta. So yeah, they're not crazy. We would not do that in this day and it's time for anything. So yeah, so I started drinking underage smoking underage.

17:57 You turned out. Okay, I think you made it through.

18:04 Until you met dad on a blind date then. Yes, and the funny thing is I was supposed to have a date with a person named Bill Johnson and then at about 4 in the afternoon one of my classmates who had arranged this group of us girls, and we were each assigned. Somebody said this guy, he's short named Clyde Johnson was going to be staying in town and I would have a date with him since I wish you were here. I am like well-dressed. I don't like short men because they usually either have a Napoleonic complex. You know, where is we can and I didn't like the name V. I don't know if I had heard it before but I didn't like it he was from

19:04 Bainbridge Georgia and the only thing I knew about that was one of the worst Governors we ever had was from Bainbridge Georgia. So I remember rocking in my grandmother's rocking chair and complaining all afternoon and my mother's like now. Just go in with a good attitude. You got to have fun and you'll have fun.

19:31 And so if I came and pick me up at the door and Daddy went down and he answered the door and at the time Madras, which is the Plaid material name in Made in India was very very popular.

19:49 I had on a blue mattress dress and daddy Clyde had on Blue Madras shirt and daddy open the door, you know all that white stuff that Daddy's actually open the doors back then and like came in the front door and I was walking down the stairs and and honestly, it was love at first I thought he had blonde hair and blue eyes and so sweet so we went to the fraternity party.

20:28 And I'd often prayed. I was a very spiritual person. My spirituality is always been identified with Christianity and I would pray because my family was on the naughty. You know, when when am I going to meet the person I'm going to spend the rest of my life and I felt the Lord's day. I'll give you a sign I'll have bells ring. And so we were at this fraternity party and back then there was a song out and it had bills in it and it was so going to the chapel and you're gonna get married. So I knew I was going to marry him.

21:22 He and I mean when we have a net that day the next day, you know, he fell in love with me too, but didn't think he would.

21:35 He was good enough for me because he came from a family that did not have the money that my family had and he

21:47 You know, we kept dating and everything. He says that I asked him to marry me but cuz he wouldn't have ever had the nerve to do that.

21:58 But we we dated and you know back then you didn't shack up together and I was a good Christian girl and so you either

22:14 Got married, or you did things that I wasn't comfortable with you. So we

22:22 Got married after my freshman year of college June 12th, 1965. My mother in particular was completely completely opposed to it said she was going to drug me and put me on an airplane and Cindy to Boston to be with an aunt.

22:48 How old were you at the time I will when I married as almost 19 we married in June and August actually in my sister's everybody's bearded mother's anger at me. Didn't she get really really mad, but I didn't seem to care.

23:17 And

23:18 So, and I got engaged in in on Christmas day in 64. Yes, and in an airplane and my sisters, but there are four years older than I am, Maryland.

23:38 Goldsmith Hudgens and Elizabeth Goldsmith not at the time were just begging me to run away and get married because they just couldn't take mother saying the next six months and I said, you know what I was christened in this church. I was confirmed in this church, and I'm going to get married in this church. So we did I didn't know the day before my wedding is mother was going to come but she did she doesn't look real happy and most of the pictures but she did come.

24:17 And she ended up being a wonderful mother-in-law. I think after she had lost the battle.

24:28 Is she you know that she knew I was a good person. I just wasn't doing what she wanted me to do, which was to marry and SAE from Georgia Tech from Buckhead society and Buckhead.

24:46 Just be the richest area in Atlanta a linked like I grew up.

24:55 And I didn't do what my parents wanted me to do. I understand now and that they were very sad that I dropped out of college because I was the smartest one in the family was and they

25:15 You know they were me to finish college.

25:20 Which you know I eventually did but that just wasn't my time so we didn't have

25:29 Two nickels to rub together. I think I I went to work as a secretary and I think I made $200 a month. Maybe daddy made 250. He was still working full-time and in night school at Georgia state to become an accountant.

25:53 Cuz he had to work his way through college, which is fine. He was one of seven children and they didn't have the money. They gave him $100 and he has $1,000 scholarship from Winn-Dixie and said have a good life. And so we worked his way through college and it was great that George State University always had a strong night school and it always have a strong accounting school. So it was actually four years after we married when he graduated but he'd already been working with CPA firms. So and $100 story. I remember it. So at the texturizer shared recently have social media of that and I hugging was from my high school graduation and the story of that picture is he

26:53 Did a accounting track and I don't know what it's called, but he took the money that his parents gave him when he graduated from high school and adjusted it for inflation. I guess and gave me that amount when I graduated from high school and put it into an account. So that's when I did not know that the first in his family and tries me to learn that he went back to college cuz when I was a lot younger, you know college was an important thing in our family and I never realized what you had been even become a nurse when I was

27:44 What 5 or so and so that was all I ever knew it was that you were a nurse. I didn't realize until later. I think when I graduated from high school and I just floated the idea of doing, you know, taking a year off to go travel. And you said we don't do that. If it was very clear to me that college was very important and that when I learned that you went to college to get your Nursing degree at made a lot of sense to me that college would be so important you sharing that your mom had that hope as well. Talk about what encouraged you to go back into nursing you said of the kid you didn't really want to be in there. So what what was your thinking around that?

28:44 Well when I when I

28:51 Stopped college and had meadowsweet which is well, I guess I stopped College after my freshman year and I try to go back to Georgia State and work full-time, but I've always had some difficulties with the name Mia and the doctor said, you know, you got to you got to either work or go to school and a roof over my head. As you know, Michael has always been very important to me and so I didn't go back to school and then in my twenties

29:23 I was almost 23 when I had met a sweeter first child.

29:32 In fact when I quit work and we had medisuite I said, you know the list of the classics that I hadn't read and I would read those it alot of self-education home and did a lot of work to the church top Bible studies ahead Bible studies. I worked at the retardation center across from my church when we used to have people with developmental delays delays live on a campus rather than group homes.

30:07 And

30:09 And Metta sweet was born in 1969 and Deb was born in 1971, Debra.

30:20 Katherine Johnson Ellis and meadowsweet Johnson Edge

30:27 And then between Deb being born in 71 and you're being born in 79. I had three miscarriages and Daddy and I

30:44 We both got come from a family with five children. He comes with the family at 7, and we wanted another child and it was not to have a son and makes me upset but it was Deborah State and meadowsweet was ten when you were born in 79. And so

31:14 I you were born in 79 and Leslie. I was born in 46. So what did that make me when you were born 33 Oz and I attend one of those kind of self-evaluations when I turned 30 and one of the things that I realized at that time was I really felt like I was too smart not to have a college education and my volunteer work. I done and my work at the retardation center in particular.

31:55 I I felt you can do only so much as a volunteer and you have no power to be a change agent and I thought about being a therapist like you are a licensed social worker, but I knew I didn't have patience for that. I didn't want people coming in my office every week with the same problem. And when I want to say, okay one two, three four, and so that's why I decided to become a nurse felt like. Call me today that it was also because Mother and Daddy were in the hospital 14 times the last two years they lived. I was not a nurse.

32:44 I was an advocate but I had no real power and and I knew that family need help and they need somebody with a loving heart.

32:58 Take care for them. So that's what now did I ever think that I would do something like start starting the first inpatient hospice the people with AIDS an oh and did I think that I'd start my own company to care manager for taking care of seniors and those with developmental delays know if God had told me that I would have said no way. I just wanted to work 3 days a week or something in the hospital and just be able to use my brain. So I just kind of

33:37 I've always tried to listen to Lorde with my heart share the story about your oncology patients and the AIDS crisis and the 80s and how that was. Yeah. I got my degree in.

33:58 1989

34:03 87 the same year meadowsweet graduated from high school. I graduated college and I went to work for a radiation oncologist at Georgia Baptist Medical Center where Clark was the CFO and in 87, we did treat people with AIDS with radiation for kaposi sarcoma and lymphomas that they were prone to and at that time people would not even physically touch people with AIDS and they were losing their jobs. If anybody knew they had AIDS and I would go to the waiting room and I would you know, shake their hand and let's come back to the exam room and they would say

34:53 Do you know what I have and you touched me and I said yes. I know you have AIDS and I know how it's transmitted and yes, I touched and their current.

35:09 Their creativity and the AIDS service organizations that they created knowing that they were going to be dead before anything could be done with those organizations at the time in 87. There was an 18-month life expectancy for people with AIDS.

35:28 And there was one in particular that

35:35 Was gay is gay male flight attendant and he was a Christian and I was beginning to put that together in my mind and in my heart I knew in my heart God love gay people but Christianity really was not open to gay people at that time. Like many of the denominations are not now. I'm very proud to have always been an Episcopalian and 45 minutes one day talking to him about that and the doctor that I work Twisted. So are you doing therapy with these patients now? Cuz I really was kind of a counselor like too many patients and I said, no they're doing it with me.

36:27 And I followed with Danny for two years and when he was back in the hospital dying, I went over to see him and he wanted me to read the Bible with him, which I see it and he had a do not resuscitate advance directive and I went on vacation the next week and he coded and his mother was there and made them resuscitate him and he was in ICU for 3 days and

37:01 My doctor said to me when I got back, he told me that Danny and dad and he said I'm glad you weren't here cuz you knew he did not want to be resuscitated. So they touch my heart greatly as just my oncology patients.

37:17 And so you have started like you said the first AIDS Hospice in Atlanta. What year was that? 1991 and infectious disease nurse spring to mind Kathy Middleton much. But younger than I was at the time she and I came up with the idea in January of 91 that issue an infectious disease nurse. And you know, she said wouldn't it be great to create a space look like in an old house like a home-like setting to care for people with AIDS cuz they were staying in the hospital for three or four months that our time because they required IV therapy and if they had a partner that was still alive that that partner was working and

38:17 Or either their partner was dead. And of course at the many of their families, so we're like, well, that's a great idea and Clyde was you know, he knew that that was a great big very big discharge planning and from initiation of that thought to actually opening. Our doors was almost 12 months December 26th, 1991. We open the doors of Haven Health hospice and that seemed like a long time but to consider we had to go through a neighborhood regulations and I had to go we had to present a paper to the state of Georgia, you know Health Department saying why we needed this alternative setting for people with AIDS to going before the, Atlanta, Georgia.

39:17 I don't know. They look like they're all sitting up there in court usual me.

39:23 I guess they were the planning people or I don't even know which one it was legislature or something and

39:33 Then to renovate a hundred year old house to meet Healthcare standards and get your doors open in less than a year. I think it's pretty miraculous. And then after that it was in 2001, I think when you started Metta Johnson and Associates, is that right?

39:54 That's right in this year as the 20-year anniversary get an AIDS became more of a chronic disease, praise God so we became medicare-certified and serve people with all diagnose Easton open to home hospice program that became the largest in the city and Clyde no cell.

40:29 To someone that it did not work out with he did not have the heart that we had so we left in 2001.

40:39 And what I knew was that families need an advocate they need somebody that knowledgeable that will help them understand their health care, which is very disjointed at this time and you can't make good Beijing decisions or decisions. If you're disabled without somebody understanding your help here and knowing medications that will give you their opinion.

41:10 Right now doctors, you know, you used to have several of what you did. It was your mother but now they can't really answer that cuz everything's so litigious. So we started Metta Johnson and Associates and

41:27 Just me and I worked by myself for three or four years building the business on call 24/7 and no relief to cost and you came out with us 6 years ago and and we have seven care managers and it's just been a wonderful gift. I really do think when I started with your management. I was on The Cutting Edge in Atlanta as I was with inpatient Hospice in 91 and a very proud of that, How would you describe your legacy?

42:21 I hope

42:24 One of caring

42:27 And loving I said one of my patients and I do you know yesterday when I left him I said, I love you cuz I truly come to love our clients and

42:41 And in a legacy of doing things well always in my nursing work and with the hospice Clyde and I we always had the reputation. So if they're involved is going to be done well, and it's going to be done, right?

43:00 And now

43:03 Our Legacy goes to you efforts to carry it on.

43:14 But yes, I think throughout our life together. We've been very close and

43:24 Remember we have conversations in the kitchen and I be sitting on the counter and we've come a long way since 10, but yes, I always told you you you should be a lawyer cuz you could debate. Oh well, and I'm glad you use those that

43:46 Add a street and personality to be an advocate. You always said you didn't want to be a lawyer cuz she only wanted to stand up for what was right.

43:59 Right. I just want to have to defend defend the guilty people that I didn't realize that was not all that lawyers are about but I have a great gift of us working together. And yes.

44:15 Lovett the greatest Gifts of my life just like this gift today. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you. I love you. I love you.