Enter Stage Middle
Once upon a time, there was …
Wait! Scratch that! Delete. Start over.
Too boring, too simplified, too regular, too cliché. For sure.
On its surface, “Once upon a time…” might be a perfectly fitting way to start this journey of a tale which will follow. For one, the subject of this journey actually fancied herself somewhat of a princess, from childhood all the way to the very end.
And, quite accurately, she lived a fairy tale… In the wonders of her mind, where a world of theater played out. Where galaxies of greatness unfolded.
Galaxies! Yes, let’s go for it:
…A not so long time ago in a galaxy right here, planet Earth, there existed a larger- than-life character. She could be the protagonist or the antagonist, or fall into both roles simultaneously. We will leave that at this for now… For you will see the subject of this work of digital literary something or another is nothing if not… something else.
The subject of our story is a woman who could be loved or hated, or both at the same time. She desired affection and even sympathy, and she got (perhaps, “earned”) plenty of both during her adult years.
To tell her story, I won’t start at the beginning. Or at the end. Instead, let’s start smack dab in the middle… and then hop all around. Well, why not? This story needn’t have any rules… for our subject certainly lived by absolutely zero rules. She was carefree and chaotic, sometimes guided, usually not… but alway, yes always, she was fun… and so, too, will this story be.
The middle happens to be in the early 1940s, just before the United States entered into the second World War— you know, the war after the war that was supposed to have ended all wars.
At this particular time, Candace Grace Weatherby Johnson is a beautiful woman of 22 years. She found herself trapped in a painstakingly boring marriage and she was ready to cut loose. Her time had come to glitter and to shine and if she didn’t watch herself, this “magic hour” would pass on by and leave her forever stuck in a sea of plain and normal. Ugh! Impossible!
She needed to take control of her vessel, for it was time for her star to shine. She was ready to be a shining star… and for the universe to take note.
Let’s take a step back in time and get a glimpse of what’s going on in her mind.
These days, Candace found herself all too frequently contemplating her lot in life… where she is, how she got here, and how she was going to un-get where she is and get some where else. Problem is, as circumstances have it, she has a husband and a child, neither of whom she was quite ready for. The biggest decisions in her life thus far had not been made by her, but by well-intended family members and her decade-older husband. And about her husband… super hard working though he was, he was also tired, worn out, overworked and underpaid (barely earning enough money to pay the rent on their tiny wood frame house in the middle of a small rural town in northeast Alabama). He was as blue collar of a worker as blue collar could be, working for a concrete company. And… his fun factor was non-existent, and this was a serious problem because Candace loved fun… and she loathed boring.
As was her current situation, Candace was lonely, she was broke, she was dreadfully bored, and she was terribly unfulfilled. She felt a sense of being trapped… in the throws of this arranged marriage. Norman Johnson, her husband, had been the choice of her grandfather, a Bishop in the Mormon church in her rural hometown of Buchanan, Georgia.
See, the story goes, in rapid summary, that Candace was one of nine children born to Lonnie and Lizzie Weatherby. Lizzie died in 1932 two days after delivering a stillborn baby girl. She was just 38, and her death left her husband to take care of their six minor children, a task he was wholly unprepared for, and he soonafter suffered a nervous breakdown and moved away on his own, leaving his children with their maternal grandparents, William Cary and Presila Brannon.
The Brannons had already raised their own six children and were in their sixties by the time their son-in-law left town minus his six youngest children, so you can imagine their predicament with the latest turn of events. And so, in their best way of “handling” things, they sought and found a mature man to become a husband to 17-year-old Candace. She obliged and dropped out of high school (11th grade) in 1937 to appease the grandfather she adored by marrying this man, Norman Johnson.
The newlyweds moved 50 miles west, to Anniston, Alabama, where Norman would work as a superintendent for a concrete company. In the summer of 1940, Candace gave birth to her first child, Norman Weatherby Johnson. This was a lot for Candace, and not in the least how she imagined her life would play out.
Neither marriage nor motherhood satisfied Candace, and particularly the poverty in which she lived frayed her mental well-being. She longed for more and envied her 20-year-old girlfriends from school who were now out living their best lives, independent, foot loose and fancy free.
“This life is not for me!” Candace thought on too many occasions to count. Maybe even, in her less than humble mind, she thought with a smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye, “I was destined to be somebody big… I was made for fame and I was destined for fortune! Yes! Fame AND Fortune!
This perceived destiny led Candace to tempt meeting other men and other opportunities when she, hardly out of just boredom, responded to an advertisement in her local newspaper to become a volunteer hostess to soldiers and military men through the United Service Organization (USO). Candace quickly found she could strike gold by taking matters into her own hands.
One night in March 1942, she met and was befriended by Sgt. Winthrop (Win) Rockefeller. Easily considered America’s most eligible bachelor, Win was the grandson of one of the greatest titans in American history, Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller.
This meeting somewhat kind of sort of … maybe a lot more than just kind of… indirectly led to a new life for Candace. She and Win became friendly… one could (would) say very friendly. Later reports declared Candace and Win enjoyed an affair and during the time they were “seeing” each other, she became pregnant with her second child. In December 1943, Candace Rita Johnson was born, just weeks before Rockefeller was sent to into the war, in the Pacific Theater. “News” accounts later declared Win might be the father or Rita, but this was never formally confirmed… however, the “rumors” were also never disputed by Candace or by Win. And therefore… the “rumors” never subsided.
After Rockefeller left his homeland to fight overseas, the “hot and heavy” portion of the affair between he and Candace appears to have largely ended, though the two did seem to keep in touch through the years. There has been plenty of speculation that Rockefeller “helped” Candace financially, perhaps his way of keeping her quiet regarding their escapades … as he later married actress and the former Miss Lithuania “Bobo” Sears in 1948 and would also eventually dive into politics, in the 1960s, becoming the Governor of Arkansas.
Whatever the result of the affair with Win Rockefeller might have or might not have been, one thing is for certain… The seeds were planted for Candace and she now knew what she could have in this world… and she definitely liked it. There was no turning back.
Next: The Road to Glitter and Gold