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.