As a deacon at Rainbow Park Baptist Church in Decatur, Don Lockhart used to visit John H. Young and his wife once a month to minister to them. But he felt he got as good as he gave.
“I’d go visit to pray and minister to them, but I’d leave energized and spiritually charged because they’d minister to me,” said Lockhart, now a minister and the founding pastor of First Christ Cares Church in Ellenwood.
When they met at Rainbow Park in 1996, Lockhart was a new deacon. Young, a deacon emeritus, provided him guidance. “He was always positive,” Lockhart said. “The world could be coming apart. He would say, ‘Don’t worry about it. God’s got everything covered. You can’t control your heartbeat or your breathing. Just trust God to work it out.’ I use some of his quips in my sermons now.”
Young of Stone Mountain died on March 7 of complications from pneumonia. He was 102. His funeral was March 14 at Berean Christian Church Gwinnett in Snellville.
He was born in Baltimore on Jan. 14, 1913. At age 16, Young lied about his age to get a job as a deckhand on a fishing boat. One day at sea, his big toe was cut off in an accident, and he didn’t even realize it. “That’s how he ended up with nine toes,” said his daughter Joan Edmonson of Stone Mountain. “It kept him out of the military.”
While visiting his mother in New Jersey a few years later, Young met Alma Chappell at a social gathering. Smitten at first sight, he never returned to Baltimore. They married in 1935, settled in Glen Rock, N.J., and had two children.
He worked as a chauffeur and a cab driver before landing a position as a custodian at Ridgewood High School where he worked until he retired in 1978. He and his wife were active in their church, where he served as a deacon, and in their neighborhood club. They loved to host social gatherings. She played bridge. He preferred pinochle and pool.
On weekends they’d head to the Cotton Club or the Savoy in Harlem to dance to the sounds of Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington and other big bands of the day.
“They loved dancing,” said granddaughter Crystal Edmonson Lewis of Atlanta. “It was tough times then. They didn’t have a lot of money, but they had a lot of fun.”
In 1985, he and his wife moved to Decatur to live near family. Outgoing and friendly, they had no trouble adjusting to their new community. They joined Rainbow Park church. Young became a deacon, and his wife taught Sunday school. They were always on the go with the senior social club. The dapper Young never left home without a hat, a handkerchief and the top button of his shirt fastened.
He was a jokester and a pool shark. “In his 90s, he was beating his grandsons at pool,” said Charles Alexander of Johns Creek, a longtime friend who attended church with Young in New Jersey.
He loved word-search books and enjoyed playing checkers with his grandchildren. “You had to watch him. He would cheat at checkers,” said Bebe Morgan, a retired nurse and family friend who used to sit with him and take him on outings when his daughter was away. “He loved to ride the Duck at Stone Mountain. He was a lot of fun to be with.”
His grandchildren called him Papa. To everyone who met him, he became papa, his daughter said. “My daddy never knew a stranger. He was a happy, wonderful person,” Edmonson said. “If he met you, you were family. He believed that the way you treat people is the way they treat you.”
Edmonson moved her parents into her Stone Mountain home in 2006 after her mother developed a heart condition. Even though Young was in his 90s he still helped care for his wife, driving her to doctor’s appointments and ensuring she took her medication. She died in 2009 at the age of 93. They’d been married for 74 years.
“He really missed her. They absolutely adored each other,” Edmonson said. “He got dementia and could not get in his head that she was gone. Every evening, he would still ask about his wife. He never got over losing her.”
Young had always told his family and friends that he would live to be a centenarian. At his 100th birthday party, he reminded them that he told them so. Two years later, he died in his sleep.
“They’re reunited,” Edmonson said of her parents. “I’m at peace with that and happy with that. I was blessed to have my dad for 72 years.”
In addition to his daughter, Young is survived by seven grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
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