Dyle Robert Johnson, Mayport Historian

Dyle Robert Johnson, Mayport Historian
Dyle R. Johnson
Photo: Beaches Museum
Dyle Robert Johnson built things, sometimes with his hands, sometimes with
his mind. He worked in a Georgia pulp mill; served in the United States Navy;
moved to Mayport, Florida where he established successful businesses. He also
became an historian of Mayport, leaving a valuable collection of papers and
photographs, and was a founder of the Beaches Area Historical Society.
Johnson was a prominent businessman in Mayport, the little village in
Duval County, Florida that shared the northern tip of a barrier island with East
Mayport and Naval Station Mayport. He owned Johnson’s Grocery in the
village, and, on highway AIA south of the naval base, a gas station, a small
nursery, and five duplexes in Oak Harbor. He was Mayport Postmaster, 1962-69.
Brunswick, Georgia played an important role in his early life. He was born
on April 19, 1915 in Atkinson, Georgia, 27 miles east of Brunswick on US Highway
82.1 He worked in a pulp mill there. He learned the grocery business from his
father who owned a store in Arco near Brunswick, Georgia and then learned
more from Ralph Tillotson in Mayport, Florida. He followed his sister there in 1937.
She had married Tillotson who owned a grocery store.
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He may have been born in Blackshear, Georgia, a town near Waycross.
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Living in Mayport was great fun, much more so than working in a
Brunswick paper mill. He was a dark, handsome, and single twenty-year-old
man. Mayport provided both river and ocean fishing, on shore and off shore. He
soon became an avid fisherman. The miles of hard packed beach sand
reaching south from the jetties gave him a place to open up his motorcycle and
speed. There were almost no buildings on the oceanfront until he reached the
little town of Atlantic Beach.
Dyle Johnson
Nell James of Moultrie, Georgia was visiting with friends when she met
Dyle Johnson sometime in the late 30s. The story goes that she had stopped at a
hamburger joint where Atlantic Boulevard meets the ocean to a Moultrie fellow
she knew when Johnson, wearing a leather jacket, rode up on his motorcycle.
He was a handsome man.
She was three years younger
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than he and unmarried. She decided then and there that she would marry him.
She did sometime after 1940. She was a twenty-two year old beautician living
with her parents, brother, and sister before she married Dyle in 1940 in Moultrie.
Johnson Wedding
Courtesy of Lauren Johnson Coffelt
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Nell and Petty Officer 2nd Class Dyle Johnson Courtesy of Lauren Johnson Coffelt
They began a family; their first child, James Dyle Johnson was born on
September 1942, but Johnson went into the Navy, serving in the Pacific, and
taking part in several invasions that of Okinawa. His other three children―Sara,
Linda, and William Ralph―were born after he returned.
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He bought out his brother-in-law’s store after World War II (in 1945 or 1946)
and renamed it Johnson’s Grocery. The store sold more than groceries; he sold
clothes, seed, drugs, clothes, shoes, etc. It was a general store but known for the
quality of its meat. At that time the Mayport Road entered the village via Palmer
Street, making it an ideal location. The store was popular with adults and kids
alike. Mayport Elementary was across the street, and kids bought sweets, soft
drinks, and peanuts. Many adults depended upon the credit Johnson extended
because they belonged to fishing families. Fishermen have money when they
have a catch to sell. Mayport ports sailed to the waters of south Florida, the Dry
Tortugas, and Campeche, Mexico seeking big harvests. In the meantime, their
families could charge at Johnson’s. He ran a big credit business. When the boats
returned, there was money.
The family lived at the store on Palmer Street, and then he expanded both
floors with a concrete block addition in 1948. One can see his handwork in the
photo below.
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Former Johnson residence and grocery store
Photo: Don Mabry
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Former Mayport Elementary
Photo: Don Mabry
Johnson prospered enough that he could have a larger, more modern
home built a few doors down on Palmer. By 1952, he and Nell would have four
children. So they moved to better quarters.
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1340 Palmer , Mayport, Jacksonville, Florida
Source: Google Maps
As successful as he was, the store was not enough to satisfy his drive and
energy. He sold it to Robert Pickett.
Pickett’s Grocery
He and Nell bought 6½ acres from Elizabeth P. and Jack Stark on July 26,
1955 to launch new businesses.
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Source: Johnson Collection, Beaches Museum & History Park
The first was a gas station at 2528 A1A that he and his son Jim built on 52
consecutive Sundays, a feat that Jim has never forgotten. Originally it was a Gulf
Station but became a Texaco station. He leased the building (now B & M Bait
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and Tackle) with the tenant paying him rent as a percentage of gas sales. It was
a steady but not a large income.
Photo: Don Mabry
Across the highway next to the Oak Harbor subdivision, he and his son
built two duplexes from reclaimed lumber. As Jim said: “and later he contracted
for three other duplex buildings.”
He built a small nursery, Saturiba Gardens, named after the Chief Saturiba,
head of the Timucua tribe that met the French when they arrived in 1562.
Johnson loved flowers and other plants. As a shrewd businessman, he also
understood that his costs would be low because he could propagate plants by
grafting or cutting to grow new plants from existing ones. The profit margin was
very large. Although Johnson’s grocery was the start of his business success, the
nursery was his love. Growing was important.
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He was Postmaster of Mayport Post Office, February 2, 1962 into 1969.2 The
Post Office was in a building which also contained Samuel Carl "Country"
Powell’s drug store on the main street. Powell and Johnson shared some things in
common. Powell was born in in Brunswick on May 15, 1915, and his wife Louisa
was the sister of Ralph Tillotson. Before 1971, postmasters were political
appointments, so Johnson’s connections to people in the community were
important in his obtaining the job.
Earning money, even doing things he enjoyed, did not satisfy his desire to
make his community better. His primary community was Mayport village and the
former East Mayport. He joined with others to create the Mayport Volunteer Fire
Department.
Dyle Johnson on Right. Mayport Volunteer Fire Department
Scouting came to Mayport because of him and the Scouts met in the
Sunday School building of the Mayport Presbyterian Church. Nell was a
Presbyterian when growing up in Moultrie but Dyle joined the church later in life
and became fervent in his beliefs. He rose to the positions of deacon and elder.
Beaches Leader, June 18, 1981; “Duval County Postmasters/Mistresses,” Fl-GenWeb,
http://www.fl-genweb.org/duval/postoffice/postmaster.html.
2
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Mayport Presbyterian Church, founded 1892
Photo: Don Mabry
He was also concerned with the other communities in what are called the
Beaches―Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach, Jacksonville Beach, Ponte Vedra,
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and Palm Valley. All funneled students, including his children, into Fletcher
Junior-Senior High School and, after 1964, into Fletcher Middle School and
Fletcher High School. He was a charter member of the Beaches Area Historical
Society (BAHS), a non-profit dedicated to preserving the history of the area.
Historic preservation became a cause. He fought and won the battle to
preserve the lighthouse of1859. It was just down the street from his home but
inside the Navy’s fence. The Navy has no need of it and worries that it is an
obstacle to its aviation, Johnson and others got it placed on the National
Register of Historic Place, thus protecting it. In 1979, he donated red bricks for
the BAHS building.
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Source: Johnson Collection, Beaches Museum & History Park
In October, 1980, he manned the BAHS booth at the “Mayport and All that Jazz
Festival.”
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Dyle R. Johnson and Mrs. William (Nat) Taylor Beaches Area Historical Society
booth
Mayport was a railroad hub for a short time. The Jacksonville, Mayport,
and Pablo Railway and Navigation Company ran from Burnside Beach through
Mayport and on to the river bank in Arlington where passengers could take a
ferry across to Jacksonville. It failed but Henry M. Flagler acquired its assets and
those of the Jacksonville and Atlantic Railway, which ran between
Pablo/Jacksonville Beach and South Jacksonville, in 1899. He created the
Mayport Branch of his Florida East Coast Railway by running the tracks north
from then Pablo Beach to Mayport. Flagler needed coal for his railroad so he
built the line to Mayport and erected a large coal dock. When the FEC shifted
from coal to diesel engines, Mayport became less important. The FEC went
bankrupt in 1932; the tracks from South Jacksonville to Mayport were removed.
The Mayport depot remained until Johnson, with the help of others, managed to
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get it relocated to the new History Park on Beach Boulevard in Jacksonville
Beach in 1981.
FEC Mayport, Beaches Museum and History Park
Photo: Don Mabry
Railroads fascinated him. He and Walter T. Galvin, a locomotive fireman,
became friendly. From his notes in his Collection, he apparently planned to write
about Galvin. He acquired this locomotive photograph as well as Mayport
photographs for BAHS. He made notes on Flagler’s progress in reaching Key
West.
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Seaboard Airline RR
Source: Beaches Museum & History Park
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Johnson’s research notes reveal his interests in many things. As Helen
Cooper Floyd (of Minorcan descent) pointed out, he was not a Minorcan but a
Georgia cracker whose research on Mayport for the BAHS qualifies him to be an
honorary Minorcan.3 He researched Jean Ribault and the French efforts to settle
on the river, Spanish and English land grants, immigrants (both Minorcan and
non-Minorcan), mail carriers such as Green Bush, Ponte Vedra’s origins, Palm
Valley, Alexander McGillivray, John McQueen, bar pilots, lighthouse keepers,
Mayport people and more. The historical society had energized him.
3
Helen Cooper Floyd, “A Corner on History,” Florida Times-Union, September 21, 1978.
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His life ended before he could write on all the topics which interested him.
He died of a heart attack on June 11, 1981 at age 66.4
In 1984, his wife Nell and her sister Lois honored him by attending the
centennial celebration of the founding of Jacksonville Beach. Appropriately,
they and BAHS and Museum founder Jean Haden McCormick were
photographed with the Mayport depot in the background.
1984 Mayport Railway Terminal Museum- Centennial Celebration
Lois Johnson Tillotson, Jean Haden McCormick, Nell James Johnson
4
“Dyle R. Johnson, Beaches Historian, is dead at 66,” Florida Times-Union, June 18, 1981.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Dyle R. Johnson Collection of the Beaches Museum & History Park was
essential. The Beaches Area Historical Society was wise enough to preserve his
notes and writings. Under the leadership of Director Christine Hoffman, Sara
Jackson and Robert Sanders provided essential aid. I appreciate what they do.
Two of Johnson’s children, Jim and Linda, and a grandchild, Lauren
Johnson Coffelt aided the project by proving information and photographs. Jim
and I were classmates from 1953 until 1979 and have visited at reunions.
Mayport have been very kind in answering my queries. Thanks to Alec
Newell, Buster Brown, John Gavagan, and the “Mayport Where I Come From”
Facebook group, especially Betty McNamara, B. W. Chattaway, Clara
Singleton, Becky Millington Jackson, and Penny Floyd King.
Janet Macdonell did the proof reading. Brad Moreland solved a technical
problem. Paula, my wife and best friend, has endured.
I, of course, am solely responsible for its contents.
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