Carole Jean Wikel

Carole Jean Wikel was the first child born to Frederick Charles Wikel and Effie Jean Powers, on January 5, 1949.

Name: Carole Jean Wikel
Birth: January 5, 1949 Pawhuska, Oklahoma USA
Death:
Buried:
 
Father: Frederick Charles Wikel
Mother: Effie Jean Powers

Other:
Married: March 9, 1968 Garden Grove, California USA

Spouse: Gordon Louis Johnson
Birth: June 26, 1949 Seattle, Washington USA
Death:
 Buried:
 
Military: U.S. Marine Corps
Father:
Mother:
 
​Other:
 

Children: Trisha Diane Johnson (                            ); Angela Kay Johnson (                              )

CAROL JEAN WIKEL JOHNSON
            As a young girl, I was quiet, shy, determined, and studious.  At age 47, my friends would laugh to hear me described as quiet or shy by may agree I could still be considered determined and studious.
 
            When I was 19, I told my mother I was going to marry Gordy Johnson.  She only knew him as the boy who had honked the length of the street in front of our house as he passed each afternoon after school.  We never dated in school, though. The closest we got to each other was when he put a snowball down my back on the way to Algebra class when we were juniors. After our high school graduation, the Vietnam war was in the news.  Gordy had joined the Marine Corps, and we ran into each other at a local burger bar while he was on his last leave before shipping out to the front line. He wrote our names in ketchup inside a heart on the table that day.  We dated for two long weeks and got married.  The rest of my life seemed to fall in place around that event, as I feel it was meant to.
 
            Gordy came home from Vietnam and hasn’t touched a gun since.  We are still married.  We live in the same town in Washington where we attended school together and have two beautiful, grown daughters. Trisha, our oldest, will be 28 in November.  She has a BA in political science, graduated from law school and is a member of the bar.  She is now working as a judicial assistant and is excited about the exposure to the court system she will gain and the opportunity to confer with the judge on his opinions.  Her goal has always been to work in governmental law.  Besides an interest in environmental law, she has taken an active interest in educating youth in the law.  She has taught street law in a local high school and is our state’s representative the tir CRADLE program, the center for research and development of law-related education, a law society.  Trisha lives about an hour away with her boyfriend of 6 years, Dennis Neal, and visits us often.  Her passion is reading; always has been – we used to find her reading with a flashlight under the covers after bedtime.  She also has an interest in art history, loves plants, and is a good cook like her father. Trish has an outgoing personality, likes to talk, like her mom, and has lots of friends.
 
            Her sister, Angela, will be 23 in December and is nearly Trisha’s complete opposite.  Quiet and reserved, she is a slender, 5’9” tall blond, towering over her 5’3”, also slender, dark haired sister.  Unlike Trisha, Angie couldn’t wait to get out of school.  From the time she was waiting for her classmates in kindergarten to learn to read like she already could, it was boring to her. Angie currently earns her living by doing good jobs and operating a janitorial business.  She also works part-time for her father as a construction laborer.  She’s always been the “artist” type and has only recently given consideration to trying to sell her art, which is rather unusual.  She’s had offers to purchase pieces, but can’t seem to let them go.  She has made several large “monsters” for display at our yearly Halloween parties, as well as other objects such as masks and animal figures.  She uses chicken wire, metal hangers, electrical and masking tape, paper and cloth mache, plaster glue, and found objects for her creations.  Additionally, she is good with computer graphic art and has designed many exceptional fliers for me.  Besides art, Angie loves animals, music, dancing, and the out of doors, and keeps fit with weightlifting.  She lives in our guest house with her best friend, another Angie, and exchanges caretaker, gardener, or housekeeping duties for rent. Angie is an excellent listener and person of few words. When she does speak, though, there is usually cause for laughter, due to her quick wit and sense of humor.
 
            Gordy and I own and operate a construction company and a real estate company from a home office.  Gordy is a master craftsman with skills in every phase of the construction industry.  He keeps busy with word-of-mouth advertising, and I handle the accounting and tases.  I also work for a business associate of Gordy’s, managing his construction office and the investments for the many partnerships he is involved in, which extends to the property management of apartment buildings.
 
            Gordy and I have built three homes for ourselves.  We enjoy doing all the work, from designing the hone and drawing plans, to clearing the site and building the home from the foundation to roof.  Not only are the savings substantial, but it is good exercise as well. There is at least one good project in progress at our home at any given time.
 
 
            Searching for antiques and collectibles is also something we both like to do.  We collect Phoenix Bird China, cobalt salts and vases, Maxfield Parrish artwork, oriental painting fans … the list goes on.  We usually try to coordinate our antiquing with a trip into the great Olympic Peninsula, which we have been exploring in depth for years.  It’s a never ending place for discovery in our own backyard, where we can combine a short hike with a stop at an antique shop.
 
            We are busy people by choice.  I am the treasurer for my high school class reunion committee and produce a newsletter for the alumni association. Gordy collects old picture frames and prints and combines them to create artwork for the walls, and occasionally throws a new engine in one of the kids’ cars.  When we aren’t knee deep in a work or home project, we are playing withy our animals.  The cast includes Tiger Lilly, a stray cat that we taught to do tricks (sit, shake hands, roll over, jumping through a hoop), Roxy, our new harlequin Great Dane puppy, who just picks berries off the salal bushes in our hard when she wants a snack, and Larry, our newly acquired bird, a Conure, that says a lot of things we don’t understand … yet.
 
            Anybody having anything in common with us? You know, there’s a lot in our genes that makes us alike, though we may have never met.
(From Powers Family Book compiled by Georgia Powers Jennings)