So, to continue with Post’s about my Past, I thought that I’d give you some information on my Parents.
These 2 people are my Mother & Father. My Mother, Dorothy J. Johnson, was born on May 24, 1919, in Roda County, Virginia. My Father, Wilford Frances Lawson, was born in East Potsdam, NY but don’t know what month. The year was 1917. My Mother then moved up to Hamburg, PA with my Grandparents. After graduation from Hamburg Area High School in 1937, she started working for the PA State Police in Harrisburg until deciding to join the US Army in 1943. After doing her basic training, she was shipped overseas’s to London in 1943 working at the Allied HQ doing Map tracking on a large board that showed the position’s of all the Allied troops at the time. During this time is when she met my Father, Wilford Frances Lawson, who was stationed with the 101st Airborne Division. They dated a number of times, and then decided to marry in Paris, France in June of 1945 (I think). I came along on March 11th, 1947.
During her time in London, she had told me about the German Bombs that used to fall on London. The “Buzz Bombs” were the bad ones, that she could remember. The Germans tried many times to hit the Allied HQ, but never did. Mom remembers going into an Air Raid Shelter until the siren would sound an “all clear”. Coming back out of the shelter, she saw many horrible sites. People laying in bombed out buildings, parts of bodies in the street, and the fire’s created by the bombing. Mom told me that if you could still hear the Buzz Bomb, you were all right. It was when you could not hear them that you never knew where is was going to hit.
This Image is the only one that I have or know that exists of my Parents before I came along. It was taken in the back yard of our Home in Hamburg, PA. It’s the only one that shows my Parents together while married. Then it all changed for my Mother.
It was at this time or sometime after I was born, that my Father just took off, left Mom, never to see him again. I found out in later years that he never gave Mom a notice of anything. Just up and left her, leaving her to raise me on her own with my Grandparents until they passed away in 1954 and 1956. Mom never knew where he went or why he left. I never knew anything until later years either. When I used to ask Mom who my Father was she would hardly ever speak of him. She used to cry when I would ask. I sorta learned not to ask. Leave it alone. Again, I have found out thru Ancestry.com just where he went and what happened to him. By the pictures that still exist today, I am pretty much the “spittin Image” of him, which I’m not sure if it’s good or bad. To this day, I have really no memory of him at all. He was there, did his thing, and left.
Mom must have had a tough time working a job in Harrisburg, PA, coming home on week-ends to help raise me, and then leave again to go back to work. After my Grandparents passed away, she was left to raise me on her own with no Father figure in the picture at all.
In looking back to then, I must admit that my Mother was always there for me. I never ever was abused, beaten, or treated badly in any way. I always had good cloths to wear, taken to church every Sunday, and was reared stern but fair. Back then I thought that Mom was tough on me, but I learned thru the years that there was a valid reason for that. She taught me manners. She taught me many, many things that would come into use in later years. Much of what she taught me, I still use to this day.
Can you believe that this is me! Well, it is. 
PHOTOJOURNAL OF CORKER2 