100 years is one of many milestones for Willingham
BRAWLEY — The way John Booker Willingham Jr. tells it, he just may well have ended World War II all by himself. He said he got drafted into the army just as the United States about to invade Japan. A matter of days after reporting to Camp Roberts, Japan surrendered.
Willingham said he could never be sure if the bombs stopped them or if the Japanese heard he was coming.
That’s one story out of many for Willingham, who celebrated his 100th birthday Friday.
Willingham recalled that when he first arrived in California in the 1940s with his pregnant wife, Gladys, and a set of twins, all his family had to their name was one sack each of potatoes and onions given to them by his wife’s family in Oklahoma, and an old Model A.
Willingham has a clear memory of many milestones in his life, one of which is April 4, 1941, when he was on the Yuma side of the Colorado River, fixing to make his way to Brawley where other members of his family had gone before him. “Brawley was where the work was,” he explained. But when his sister in San Diego let him know that Consolidated Aircraft was hiring, he packed up his family and moved to San Diego to work for the company.
Willingham started work for Consolidated Aircraft on June 23, 1941. There he built B-52 bombers.
He said the pace was slow till Pearl Harbor, and then the plants worked day and night. He remembers a 17week stretch he worked double shifts without a day off.
Such a pace was not foreign to him, anyway. Willingham’s daughter, Martha, said her father has worked like that all his life.
“I got out of the service on Dec. 12, 1945,” Willingham said. He received a Ruptured Duck, a pin that designated that he was honorably discharged, and rather than wait for a bus to take him home to San Diego, he stuck out his thumb like many soldiers did then and got home in two rides.
“It was the day after Christmas, 1945, that I came back to Brawley.” He said. “I rented a little house near the airport and moved my family here the 11th of January ‘46, and in April — I can’t remember the day!” At that point, he laughed a little and said, “I’ve got old-timer’s.”
But it was definitely April 1946 that he bought a house. In the summers Willingham baled hay and built houses during the winters. He built a total of seven houses, one of which he is living in today, and he says the others are still standing.
After the war ended, Willingham installed gasoline tanks. “A lot of them had gotten leaks in them during the war, but they couldn’t get to them then. I put one here in Brawley, another in El Centro, and one in Seeley.”
Willingham bought a gas station in Brawley, and then built one in Calipatria called Paragon that he ran for 20 years.
Willingham fondly remembers the silver dollar tosses that he had with customers and children alike. “Everybody’d come and challenge me and I’d get out there and heck, I was doing it all the time.” He laughed. “I hardly ever lost one. Even truckers would stop and pitch silver dollars.”
He added, “My son-inlaw was one of the best, but the worst was the poor boy who delivered soda pop there.
He lost all the time and I felt sorry for him. So one morning he challenged me and I made mine go off so that he’d win. Later, he came back after a drive to Bombay Beach and challenged me again and this time he actually beat me!”
He laughed and added: “But he was awful the rest of the time.”
Willingham met his future wife in church when they were both 10 years old. He was sitting behind her and he blew in her hair, and when she turned around and “those eyes looked at me — they weren’t brown, they were black because she was a quarter Cherokee, and she was the beautifulest woman I’d ever seen. I knew right then I was going to marry her. Course she made me wait eleven years.”
Gladys has now passed on, but Willingham said still likes to look at her picture. They had several children: Pat; Patsy (“Mike”), deceased; John Douglas; Joe, deceased; Phillip, deceased; Martha, and Robert. Currently there are four generations of Johns; all of them except for Papa John go by their middle names.
John Jason, his grandson, said his one of his favorite memories of his grandfather is what he called the ear trumpet: Papa John would tug his ear and make a trumpet sound, saying he had an ear trumpet.
Willingham is celebrating his birthday in low-key fashion this year. Family and friends are dropping in Friday and today to wish him happy birthday and to reminisce with him. Afterward, he said he will return to his daily routine of reading western novels and watching John Wayne movies, his favorite being Donovan’s Reef.
Willingham has another distinction in his family: Not only is he the oldest living Willingham, he’s the oldest Willingham ever.
He said doesn’t know of anyone else in his family who has ever lived so many years.