Johnsons retire after 26 years of serving Tuskegee Lee

Johnsons retire after 26 years of serving Tuskegee Lee

With the exception of the lemonade up the road at Toomer’s Corner, the ice cream scooped at the little shack known as the Sani-Freeze, or the Sani-Flush, on Glenn Avenue was Auburn’s premiere local delicacy until the building was demolished in 1995. 
   
The convenient relief “The Flush” provided from the summer heat of 1980 was, in fact, nearly the only good thing Don Johnson could say about his first days on the job as director of missions (DOM) for Tuskegee Lee Baptist Association — at least as far as location is concerned. The famous snack stand and the tiny former associational office shared the shadow cast by First Baptist Church, Auburn, located across the street.
   
“We had some window units and a one-room bathroom with a sink propped up by a broom handle,” Johnson said of the office.
   
Still, as he prepares to retire July 31, he can’t help but laugh at the circumstances before the office was moved to its present location in Opelika and look on the bright side of his recollection. “It was real easy to get a chocolate milkshake back then.” 
   
Back then was when the Bear Bryant-era of football was coming to a close in Tuscaloosa. Simultaneously the Johnson era of missions administration was being ushered into Auburn in a crimson-stickered car, a daring act that impressed two crimson-minded members of the associational selection committee. 
   
“People asked me, ‘Did they hire you with that Alabama sticker on your car?’ and I said, ‘Yep, they saw it. The whole committee saw it,’” Johnson said. 
   
What the committee also saw, and what the entire association would eventually see, was a loyal servant to the pastor’s cause — someone not afraid to lend an ear to the everyday frustration of pastoral work because it was an ear that had been there. 
   
“They can get discouraged so easily,” he said. “These little criticisms sometimes can get to them, and I have to unruffle those feathers, but it’s something I don’t mind doing.” 
   
His wife, Mary Alice, said listening is what her husband does best. “The pastors just want somebody to listen.”
   
Married for nearly 40 years, she is someone who has just about heard it all herself. She’s been Tuskegee Lee’s associational secretary for 26 years. 
   
“She’s been with me since day one. Some directors, or pastors even, couldn’t work with their wives,” Don Johnson admitted with a smile. “But we’ve always been able to.”
   
A group of prospective DOMs once asked him how it really was to work with his wife. “Well, when she’s at work, I tell her what to do, and if she wants to, she does it,” he replied. 
   
The two have turned interoffice and interassociational cooperation into an art form, learning the peculiar ropes of associational administration in a college town. “You learn that everything is geared to the university schedule. And you don’t plan training sessions when the university is out — you learn that real soon,” Don Johnson said.
   
“Or you don’t plan a big meeting when there’s a football game,” Mary Alice Johnson added.
   
While she makes it a point to insist that her husband’s loyalty has swung toward the Tigers, he is quick to clarify “except when they’re playing Alabama.” But certain folks find that approach unacceptable, he added. “I had a church member tell me, ‘It’s just like being saved. You either are or you ain’t.’” 
  
“Don has made no secret about being an Alabama fan, and I guess it just proves that we can all get along with each other,” said Auburn fan Rusty Sowell, pastor of Providence Baptist Church, Opelika. “To reside here in this area and encounter many of us who are strictly Auburn fans and still be able to smile, pray and serve together, that’s a pretty good testimony.”
   
Sowell and the more than 30 other association pastors have counted as a blessing the true value of a DOM committed to the Lord’s work. Don and Mary Alice Johnson will soon end their business partnership and start their retirement as simply husband and wife. 
   
“I think Don and Mary Alice are just the classic ministry couple. Their presence and leadership these 26 years have been an incredible blessing for our association,” Sowell said. “Through the years, Don has kept our association focused and involved as to our mission and Mary Alice has kept us all informed and on the same page.”
   
He first met the Johnsons 22 years ago, back in the ice cream days of downtown Auburn. Sowell credits their foresight in leading the move to the present office location just down the street from East Alabama Medical Center as an example of their leadership. 
   
“There was a lot of history with that old house by the Sani-Flush … but I think the move to Opelika was one of the wiser moves we ever made,” he said. 
   
“One thing I told them was that it needed to be near the hospital so that pastors could swing by here on their way out there to pick things up,” Don Johnson recalled.
   
Now the building the Johnsons built and made their own is preparing for new blood and slowly emptying itself of everything but a quarter of a century’s worth of a legacy of leadership.  
   
For Tuskegee Lee Association, it’s a chance to reassess who and where they are as an association. And for the Johnsons, now just at their 70s, it’s a long-deserved opportunity to embrace a slower pace, smell the roses and baby-sit grandchildren when their children — both Auburn University graduates — return home for football games. 
   
“They will be missed, to say the least,” Sowell said.