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Longtime lawyer is lauded

Known for his civic endeavors, Joseph E. Johnston Jr. is called "a man to be admired."

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published October 17, 2006

BROOKSVILLE - Founders Week festivities continued Monday as city officials and residents honored some of their own and prepared a time capsule of everyday artifacts to be buried for the next 50 years.

The celebration of the city's 150th anniversary started over the weekend with the parade and the rodeo and the Bandshell Bash. It is set to continue throughout the week.

Anchoring the Monday schedule was the Great Brooksvillian ceremony honoring longtime lawyer and civic contributor Joe Johnston Jr.

Johnston couldn't attend due to his poor health. But the big crowd that gathered in the main room of City Hall was a who's who of Brooksville old and new - City Council members, Deputy County Administrator Larry Jennings, Property Appraiser Alvin Mazourek, Circuit Judges Stephen Rushing and Dan Merritt Sr., Hernando County Commission Chairwoman Diane Rowden, Congress member Ginny Brown-Waite.

All there for Johnston.

"Oh, I think he deserves it," said Bob "Buzzy" Breen, Hernando High Class of '51.

"Long overdue," said Jim Spencer, the owner of the old Spencer's Restaurant, where Johnston ate many meals.

Johnston, 84, Hernando High Class of '40, University of Florida grad, Navy pilot in World War II, comes from one of the town's older families. His father was born in town in 1892, and Johnston Jr. is the father of Mayor Joe Johnston III, local lawyer Darryl Johnston and county property appraiser's office employee Kevin Johnston, and has six grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.

He was elected state senator in 1948 and sponsored the legislation that resulted in "Sunshine State" being put on the state's license plates. He sponsored the "fence law" in 1949 that made folks in the county finally fence in their cattle. He also as a member of the local group of Jaycees was responsible for getting the town's first permanent street signs.

He was a founding member of the Brooksville Rotary Club and the First National Bank of Brooksville and was a board member and the attorney for the First United Methodist Church. He was city attorney from 1950 to 1963 and the attorney for the county School Board for almost 40 years.

Merritt, the judge, said in a short speech that Johnston was "a man to be admired, a man to be looked up to, and for the legal community a man to emulated."

Said Class of '46 alum Leland McKeown: "He got the cows off the highway."

Outside a bit later, City Clerk Karen Phillips and others put into the time capsule, in extra-large Ziploc bags, a long list of stuff that included current copies of the St. Petersburg Times and the Hernando Today, this week's City Council meeting agenda, CDs of pictures of city events, a T-shirt from WWJB 1450-AM and the October issue of Old Brooksville in Photos & Stories.

Before totally filling the capsule, though, Phillips unveiled a plaque in front of City Hall honoring some of Brooksville's original families. This was an opportunity for some of the present-day descendants like banker Bob Barnett, McKeown and local lawyer Joe Mason to get up and take the mike and talk about their second cousins and their great-granddaddies and how most all of this can be traced back to the Ederingtons up on the top of Chinsegut Hill north of town.

"I could go on and on and on," Mason said.

Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or 352 848-1434.

[Last modified October 17, 2006, 11:19:07]