Cathy Johnson wanted to be a book club member, so being the can-do person that she was, she started one.
Thirteen years ago, Cathy established the Between the Lines Book Club, composed of mostly women with whom she played tennis at River Hills Club.
“Cathy was very comfortable with organizing people,” said Claudia Addison of Jackson, a member of the club. “That was very much her gift.”
Cathy had one rule, and it was that anyone who wanted to be part of the group could be, she said. “She never wanted to exclude anyone,” Addison said.
Members of the Between the Lines Book Club, which meets once a month at the club, chose to honor her after her death on July 19 by renaming the group the Cathy Johnson Book Club. They also read her memoir, “My Life (So Far).”
Reading a memoir is interesting, Addison, said because it deepens one’s understanding of humanity. “It makes you realize how much stuff everyone has gone through,” she said.
Cathy’s early life had an unusual occurrence: When she was just a year and a half old, her mother died from cancer and family members reared her for several years until her father took over that responsibility.
Cathy met Tom Johnson, her future husband, at a dance at Marshall University on their first night as college freshmen. He requested a dance, invited her out to a fraternity party and asked if he could spend Thanksgiving with her since he was from Philadelphia, Penn. and knew he would be unable to make the long trip home. (He ended up spending every Thanksgiving with her family.)
The couple married a week after graduating from college and one month later, Tom entered the Army for a 28-year stint and Cathy became the consummate Army wife, adapting to life after every move.
“We moved 20 times,” recalled Tom, who was married to Cathy for 57 years. “She made curtains and pillows for every house. If she could do something herself, she would do it.”
Tom also supplied members of the What Would Cathy Read? book club, which residents of the Reserve subdivision in Madison began about four years ago, with copies of her memoir. The club, which lacked a name, was renamed in Cathy’s memory after her death.
“I was the editor and typist,” Tom said, explaining that Cathy wrote the book during the global pandemic with the purpose of passing along family information to their son and daughter and five grandchildren.
What Would Cathy Read? planned to read the memoir as one of its monthly selections, said Becky Adkins of Madison.
The club read “Jail Tales,” which Cathy wrote about her
experiences teaching GED skills to inmates in five different jails in five different states, the last one being the Hinds County jail, Adkins said, and listened as she spoke about what that work was like. For her work, Cathy Johnson earned the Sheriff’s Star Award for Community Service and The Governor’s Award for volunteer excellence for outstanding achievement in education.
When the club read “The Women,” a novel about three Vietnam-era nurses, members enjoyed seeing memorabilia from Tom’s days serving in the military in Vietnam that Cathy showed them, she said.
“She knew how to make a book club meeting more interesting,” Adkins said.
Susan Hicks of Madison, facilitator of What Would Cathy Read?, recalled how Cathy enjoyed the group’s discussions.
“Cathy was a kind and attentive friends, but she was no pushover,” said Hicks, a former federal court librarian. “She was firm in her opinions and would hold her ground in our group of very talkative women.”
Both Addison and Adkins remember Cathy as someone who loved her family and friends and had such a knack for decorating and entertaining that all seemed effortless. “When Tom and Cathy made friends with someone, they became lifelong friends,” Adkins said.
A voracious reader, Cathy’s Kindle had more than 1,000 titles of books saved on it, Tom said.
The renaming of both book clubs in her memory would please Cathy, Tom said, not only because she loved to read but she believed in how a book club brings people together.
“She’d be thrilled,” he said.
