Charles H. Wilkey

Madeline Clint Johnson’s second husband was Charles H. Wilkey, who went by the nickname “Bud”.  After her divorce from Fred Johnson, Madeline moved to St. Paul, Minneapolis, where she worked as a masseuse. Her son, Walter, remained in Flint Michigan, with her parents, Thomas and Mary Clint.
       In later years Madeline told her daughter-in-law, Caroline, stories of her good times in St. Paul, where she wore beautiful clothes, dated frequently, and enjoyed partying. 
       Madeline met Charles (Bud) Wilkey, who was a traveling salesman, selling advertisement for a prestigious construction magazine, The Practical Builder.  Unmarried, Madeline joined Bud on the road, which must have been very scandalous for the era.  They married in 1938, and a year later Mary Clint, was made Walter’s legal guardian.
       Bud smoked cigars, chewed tobacco, and was a heavy drinker. In his earlier years, he had been diagnosed with TB while in the military, and for a time lived in a sanitarium. Because of his TB, he was discharged from the service with a lifetime pension.
       Bud was a fastidious dresser and both he and Madeline enjoyed expensive clothing, jewelry, and fine things.  He wore a small pencil mustache, and was a slender man who, when he gained weight, did so in his middle, in the form of a protruding pot belly stomach. His penchant for meticulous grooming included shaving his legs and under his arms.
       Eventually his sales territory was along the pacific coast.  He and Madeline kept an apartment in Seattle, Washington, and one in California, dividing their time between the two states.  When they traveled, Madeline pursued her hobby, oil painting.  When in Washington, they enjoyed salmon fishing, and each year returned to California with a supply of canned salmon for their family.
       Aside from being a salesman, Bud dabbled in various questionable activities, which included book making.  One family legend tells of Madeline and Bud participating in a scheme that was very similar to the plot in Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s The Sting.
        Bud had been married before Madeline, yet he had no children of his own. By the time Bud’s stepson, Walt, was 15 years old, his mother-in-law, Mary Clint, had passed away, and Walt was living with Madeline’s father and her sister’s family.  Unhappy with his aunt and uncle, Walt ran away from Michigan, and ended up on the El Monte, California doorstep of Bud and Madeline’s one bedroom apartment.
       Bud was not happy to have his stepson move in with them. Possessing a self-centered nature, Bud was jealous of Walt, unwilling to have Madeline’s attention diverted away from himself.  He was often sarcastic to Walt, and one time dumped a bucket of ice into the sleeping teenager’s bed, which was his way of teaching him to wake up earlier.
       Bud, a heavy drinker, would often go on drunken binges that might last for several weeks at a time. He was not a friendly drunk, but a man who would become verbally abusive and sarcastic.
       Pressured by his mother and stepfather to move out, Walt left high school early, and joined the Navy at age 17.  Yet, when Walt returned from the Navy, Bud took him on the road, attempting to teach him the trade of advertising salesman.  It was a generous effort on Bud’s part, yet Walt’s niche was not that of advertising salesman.
       Bud had one sibling, Margaret, who doted on her younger brother.  She was very jealous of Madeline, and had a poor relationship with the sister-in-law.  She and her husband, Earl Anderson, had one son, who died as a young man.  Over the years, they remained close with Toynette, their widowed daughter-in-law.  In later years Margaret shared Thanksgiving dinners with Bud, Madeline, and Walt’s family. 
       Bud’s mother, Mrs. Haworth, called Caroline “Carolena”.  Madeline commented to her daughter-in-law, Caroline, that she didn’t understand why Bud was so good to his mother, who had abandoned him in his youth, to pursue her own adventures.  Ironically, Madeline had done a similar thing.
       Madeline may have been a drinker in her youth, yet by the mid-1940’s she was a teetotaler.  Unfortunately, Bud still drank in excess, and by the time Walt and Caroline married in 1947, Bud’s drinking was out of control.  Madeline was on the brink of divorcing her second husband, yet Bud curbed his drinking and they stayed together. Although he still occasionally went on a binge, they occurred far less frequently.
       In later years, Bud and Madeline settled in Covina, California. They never owned a home, opting instead to rent apartments. Bud became an active Mason, and Madeline was an active member of Eastern Star.  Madeline’s father, Thomas Clint, had been a lifetime Mason.  They became very involved in the organization, and encouraged their granddaughter in Rainbow Girls.
       Bud was an imperfect character, an alcoholic who was an abusive drunk, cynical at times, yet over the years, he was a good step-grandfather to Walt’s daughters.  Only once did either of his granddaughters see his dark side – and that was the eldest, when she was in college and was an unfortunate witness to one of his binges.  Until that time, neither granddaughter had ever witnessed Bud intoxicated.
       Bud treated both girls as if they were his own granddaughters, and both he and Madeline were generous. When Caroline and Walt announced they were expecting their first child, the news was received with coolness from both Bud and Madeline.  Yet, after the baby was born, all of that changed.  Bud doted on the child, enjoying showing her off.
       On her second birthday, Bud was determined to buy her a red fire engine that the young toddler wanted,  and he insisted to be the one to take her to the store to purchase the gift.  The two went off to the department store, yet once there the fickle child found a tricycle that suddenly seemed far more interesting, and she plopped onto the trike. A bit disappointed by her obsession with the tricycle, Bud still returned home with a new red fire engine. 
        When the second granddaughter became ill as an infant, Bud often drove Caroline (who didn’t have her driver’s license at the time) to the hospital. During those drives to the hospital, Caroline recalled that Bud, who could be quite sarcastic and cynical, was very kind to her during those trips, and did not complain about the task.
       Bud also loved dogs, and would often sneak chewing tobacco to Caroline’s cocker spaniel, Rusty.  It annoyed Caroline how much Rusty, who rarely liked anyone, adored Bud. In later years, when the Johnson family would take vacations, Bud would come to their home and walk Fritzy, their Schnauzer.
       Christmas was a favorite season for Bud, who always seemed to enjoy the holiday.  One Christmas he talked the Johnson family into opening all of their gifts on Christmas Eve. The family frantically finished all of their wrapping, only to unwrapped a short time later.  When Christmas morning arrived, they regretted going along with Bud’s suggestion.
       When the Johnson family moved to Lske Havasu, Bud often was the one to write long interesting letters to the family.  And later, a mutual acquaintance told Walt and Caroline how Bud and Madeline had been bragging about Walt’s accomplishments in Havasu, commenting on how hard he and Caroline worked, and how proud they were of them.  It was a praise, one they never expressed directly to Walt.
       By the time both granddaughters were in college, Bud became ill, and for several years was in and out of the hospital, often staying at a Seven Day Adventist hospital.  During this time, birthday gifts for the granddaughters became minimal, and the family assumed the grandparent’s finances were tight, due to the frequent hospital stays.  Later they discovered that one of the nurses at the hospital was receiving very generous birthday checks from Bud.
       Eventually the family learned the reason for the generous gifts to the nurse.  One day a furious Madeline told her son, Walt, that she had “walked in” on Bud and the young nurse.  At the time, Bud was living back at home, and they had hired the nurse from the hospital to come and help care for Bud.  Apparently, the nurse took her duties very seriously, and went the extra mile in oral duties to Bud.  The nurse was banished from the apartment, and Madeline was especially annoyed because Bud had been disinterested in sex with his wife for some time.  The family was a bit bemused over the incident, and realized that during this time Bud had already become somewhat senile.
       When Bud did pass away, it was in their Glendora, California apartment.  Their youngest granddaughter was the only one living nearby, and so she went to her grandmother’s side. When she arrived at the apartment, Madeline asked her if she wanted to pay her last respects to Bud, who was still in the bedroom.  The granddaughter declined, uncomfortable with the idea.  Bud had donated his body to medical research, and she stayed in the kitchen with her grandmother, as they removed Bud’s body from the apartment.
       Over the years Bud had become a loving, respectful and doting grandfather to Walt’s daughters. In the last years of his life, he learned to be a far better person than he had been when a 15 year old Walt had first showed up on his doorstep.