Today's Featured Biography
Larry Johnson (Lary King)
A little less than a month after our Center High School graduation ceremony, I ended up thrown in with a tired and confused rag-tag group of basic trainees at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. My first duty station after basic training was to Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas. Got married to my “high school sweetheart” and we had our first daughter (Andrea/1966) there. I was assigned the job/specialist of graphics illustrator. Kind of like being a commercial artist in the military. Talk about a cushy job!! I don’t think I could have had it any better. At the end of my enlistment, I made another of my more questionable life decisions and decided to get out of the Air Force.
Somewhere after close to four months as a civilian, I made what I thought to be a pretty rational decision for me and my family. I reentered the Air Force. My old illustrator career field wasn’t open. So, I had to choose an occupation from a list of available jobs. None of the options carried really great romantic sounding job descriptions. I ended up going to a technical school where the instructors did their best to turn me into an Air Defense Radar Systems Operator. I managed to survive the school, graduated and was ordered to my next assignment.
My family and I moved to Tucson, Arizona. I was assigned to a mountain top site (Mt. Lemmon) that once held the distinction of being the highest (over 9.000 ft) radar site in the free world. Our second daughter (Sonja/1968) was born there. It was soooo dadgum hot there. We didn’t get to stay in Tucson very long.
Even though I had volunteered to go anywhere in Southeast Asia including Viet Nam, I was given what was considered a dream assignment to Naha, Air Base in Okinawa. I was able to bring my family and our third daughter (Yolanda/1970) was born there. The assignment to Okinawa turned out to be a fantastic tour of duty and an unbelievably educational, social and cultural experience for me and my family.
All and all, my time in the military and life in general has been very rewarding and exciting. I got to see a few places and to meet some truly remarkable people along the way. I’ve either been assigned to, vacationed at or traveled to places like: Canada, Mexico, Newfoundland, Spain, France, Turkey, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Philippines, Belize, Panama, Germany and Saudi Arabia. The high school sweetheart marriage thing didn’t work out as we later divorced.
Upon completion of my tour in Germany (1986), I was sent to my final assignment at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. From there I went temporary duty to Honduras where I met the woman of my dreams (Margarita) and who has been my amazingly wonderful wife for over 35 years. Osman (USMC/2 combat tours) is my oldest stepson. He lives with his family in Tampa. Santos (Active-duty, Space Force) my second stepson is stationed and lives with his family in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Our youngest son Juan Carlos lives a short drive away in Pinellas Park close to St. Pete, Florida. I retired after 26 years in The Air Force.
Going to work for the for the United States Postal Service was a real eye opener. It didn’t take me long to figure out why the term “Going Postal” had so much relevance. The pay and benefits were pretty good but the work environment was just awful. I managed to stick it out there for 22 years.
Margarita and I became empty nesters in early 2014. We did a quick sale of our house and moved lock stock and barrel to Honduras. We lived in Margarita’s mom and dad’s small house in a little community named Nueva Esperanza. There are probably around 50 homes (a lot of them empty) in the little community. We did a major upgrade to the house and made it into a really nice place to live and share time with all the family. We even had a few friends from the U.S. come visit us. On a good day you are about one and a half hours drive from Tegucigalpa, the capital city. Anything like buying groceries, going to a mall or getting extensive health care entailed making a long ride to the city.
Being a “gringo”, I had to adapt quickly to how things worked in Honduras. Electrical power could shut off at any time. You had no way of knowing if it would be off for ten minutes or ten days. The most I recall being without power is two or three days. We had running water service usually one sometimes two days a week. During the dry season, you might go several days without running water. You really had to rely on your pila (water storage tank) or buckets if you had them. There were times when we had to have water trucked from the river to fill our pila. We used bottled water for drinking and cooking. It got very hot and none of the community homes had AC.
One of the highlights of Margarita’s and my time in Honduras was when we did volunteer work as missionaries. Our first experience was at a location just up the mountain from our home called Montana (Mon-tan-ya) de Luz (Mountain of Light). MDL (short name) was at the time the only dedicated home for children affected by HIV in all of central and South America. They clothed, housed and fed around 25 to 35 kids during our stay there. Most of the children were there after they had been abandoned (some as babies) or had lost one or both parents to HIV. The staff at MDL provided medical care on site and provided transport to the city hospital for any required care. Margarita and I helped out with odd jobs, transportation (fortunately we had a car), grocery shopping trips and whatever else was needed. Margarita was particularly great at helping the kids do letters to their stateside sponsors. I did a lot of painting and handyman stuff. Our experience at MDL was an absolute blessing. We worked at MDL for almost a year.
After our time with MDL, Margarita and I continued our missionary work with the Partiendo el Pan con el Hambriento (PHAM) Ministry in the city of Progreso (about 5 hours away). The name translates to “Breaking the bread with the Hungry”. The ministry was founded by Margarita’s brother (Gonzalo) and his wife (America) who are both pastors. The ministry shares the gospel and reaches out to some of the most extremely poverty-stricken areas of Honduras. On our mission trips, Margarita and I saw poverty on a level that defies all imagination. In some the places, families have no choice but to try to live on $1.00 a day or less. Through the blessing of gifts from our stateside donors and other sources, Margarita and I were able to witness some amazing things. Several local pastors and so many wonderful people from churches in Honduras did and continue to do so much to make the PHAM ministry a success.
In May of 2017, circumstances dictated that we move back to the United States. Tampa had become such an expensive housing market that we had to look elsewhere. Margarita and I found a home that can only be viewed as a blessing in Port Richey. We are in a 55+ community (old folks with old little usually not too attractive dogs) about 45 minutes from Tampa. We are pretty close to the water so. I get to go fishing pretty much whenever I want. Margarita and I are avid pickleball players. Margarita is a way too passionate flowers person. Our yard looks more and more like a botanical garden. Any time she leaves the house, I know to expect her to come back home with at least two more plants.
Margarita travels to Honduras two to three times a year to see family. Her trips give her the opportunity to bring medications, clothing, candies for the kids and anything else she can fit into her baggage allowance. She gets to see her older sister (Carmen) who is taking care of their elderly mother (94) and do all the travelling involved in seeing family scattered about the country. I have been back maybe a couple of times since we moved back to the U.S.
Being back in the States, we miss most of all (next to family) going on the mission trips. We are blessed however to have numerous friends who support us in our work with PHAM. We receive cash donations as well as clothing and shoe donations. We also able to raise money through the sale of donated of items. We sell the items at yard sales in our community. We send several large boxes a year of donations to the PHAM Ministry. Occasionally, we will send a box of items to Honduras so the ministry can raise money by selling much needed things at their own community yard sales. Margarita and I have been so abundantly blessed. We thank God and pray for His continued blessings. We pray too for blessings for the CHS class of 1963.
Here's a little side story. I remember talking to my cousin Eugene George at our 50th class reunion. He was very surprised when I explained to him that the people, he and just about everybody else knew as my parents were not my actual mother and father. They were my aunt and uncle. I carried their last name (Johnson) during my early years. I had to produce a copy my birth certificate prior to entering the Air Force. I recall being somewhat shocked after looking at the thermofax copy of my birth certificate for the very first time. I discovered that I had only one “r” in my first name. There were also two middle names that I didn’t know that I had. This situation presented me with problems for a number of years whenever I filed my income taxes. The IRS couldn’t understand how Larry Johnson and Lary V. A. King shared the same social security number. It took a lawyer and a legal procedure to resolve that conundrum. The name thing also caused some problem as I processed for high level security clearances in the military. Fortunately, these problems were easily resolved. Just think, all those early years went by and I didn’t even know my name…..
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