This list of wonderful individuals seems like an extended family. I haven't met many of you, yet I've read your messages and responded to many. You've often expressed thoughts or questions that were in my mind. Wendell and I were married in the First Baptist Church parsonage on June 5, 1953. We bought the home where we live in November, 1955, when our first son, Thomas Wendell was 13 months old. We added two more sons to our family, Joseph Alan, in 1957, and Robert Martin in 1967. Wendell's grandfather was Joseph Brown Johnson, the young boy who accompanied the men that hid the Oregon County records in a cave at the beginning of the Civil War. Joseph B. Johnson later held the position of County Court Clerk for several years. Wendell's father, Charlie, was the youngest son of Joseph and Melviney Mooney Johnson. His mother, Ellen Boze, was the daughter of Kinnie Alexander Boze and Laura Norman. Two names that have a long connection with Oregon County. Ellen's paternal grandfather was Levi Boze, the son of James Boze and Lucinda Parrott. We believe James was the owner of Boze Mill. Family stories say he was a Confederate soldier visiting home and was taken from home, either by bushwhackers or Union soldiers, and shot. Her maternal grandparents were John Wesley Norman and Nancy Ellen Gaulding. Some of you can recognize the "irony" of these family names being intertwined. The Bozes evidently were Confederate, while the Normans were Union, yet there were these intermarriages: Boze, Gaulding, Norman. My husband, Wendell, had been diagnosed with nephritis in 1974. His health continued to deteriorate until late 1978 doctors brought to light that word we hadn't wanted to acknowledge, HEMODIALYSIS. We were trained to do this at the Kansas City VA Medical Center, 335 miles from home. We did dialysis at home for five and one-half years. Wendell was very calm and in control in all situations. I was his assistant, and later when I was in college, our teen-age son, Robert took over. He was called for his first transplant, December 3, 1979. This transplant saved his life, but it began to reject and it was back to dialysis after 8 weeks in Kansas City. We also had been away from our 12 year-old son over Christmas. Another transplant in November, 1981. Then on June 29, 1984 he again received a call about a kidney being available and the new anti-rejection drug, cyclosporine, was available. This transplant was done at KU Medical Center on June 30, 1984, and everything went beautifully. This kidney lasted 18 1//2 years, until his death on December 27th, 2002. Wendell had a heart attack in 1987, and heart by-pass surgery, with mitral valve replacement in October, 2000. We both believed God blessed us with eighteen years we would not have had without the transplant. At the same time, the drugs he took to keep the kidney suppressed the immune system, and that allowed other medical problems to develop. Because life was a gift, Wendell always reached out to others who were ill. He shared his baked "goodies" with many others in town, and became known as the cook in our family. Even though I had to remind him I had been in the kitchen for 35 years before he began! I have lost my best friend, and my encourager, but what a legacy he left! Doris Griffith Johnson