The Good Doctor - Sm...
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While in Charlotte, he married Ida Vail, whose father had been an officer under General Robert E. Lee during the Civil War. Her father also was Chairman of the Board of Road Commissioners of Mecklenburg County for 30 years. Mecklenburg County had been a good roads leader under an 1885 State law that allowed the county to collect a small property tax for road improvement. Miss Vail's father had, according to Dr. Johnson, built the first mile of macadam road in the South.
In 1910, he and Dr. J. W. Laws organized the Lincoln County Good Roads Association to improve the area's roads. He helped secure approval of a good-roads bond in a county election. And much to the amusement of the county's old timers, he predicted that one day, a transcontinental highway would traverse the county. According to Huston, the prediction had been inspired by a joke:
While in the East, he attended the Second National Good Roads Federal Aid Convention on March 6 and 7 at the Raleigh Hotel in Washington. The conference was sponsored by AAA to discuss plans for Federal involvement in road building, then under consideration in Congress. Dr. Johnson spoke on the subject of Federal help for public lands States. Although the Convention did not adopt a resolution on the subject, his presentation helped him gain national recognition and the friendship of many leaders of the good roads movement. One of those new friends was Senator John H. Bankhead, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads.
On November 9-14, 1914, Dr. Johnson was one of 5,000 delegates to the Fourth American Road Congress in Atlanta, Georgia. The Congress was sponsored by AAA and the American Highway Association, an umbrella group of good roads boosters formed by Logan Waller Page, Director of the U.S. Office of Public Roads (OPR). During a discussion of a presentation on convict labor, Dr. Johnson addressed the group. He described his background, explaining that he was a minister of the gospel who had experienced a nervous breakdown that changed his life. He said that "being unable to take up the active work of a pastorate, I have given the most of my energies to promoting the gospel of good roads."
They reached Ruidoso where they spent the night at the White Mountain Inn. There, they met Dr. Johnson, "a prominent good roads booster and State Organizer of the Southern National Highway Association for New Mexico," according to Gross.
Shortly after Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, Dr. Johnson attended a reception for national good roads leaders in Washington. He proposed that the Federal Government-which had accumulated the largest fleet of motor trucks in the world during the war-transfer the surplus military equipment to the States for highway work. He then drafted a bill for Senator Bankhead to introduce. Congress approved a series of bills that directed the Secretary of War to transfer to the Secretary of Agriculture all surplus vehicles, construction equipment, and supplies that could be used to improve highways. The distribution of about $215 million in equipment, arranged through the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads, was substantially completed in 1925 and played a major part in the improvement of roads during the 1920's. The Bureau retained an additional $7.8 million in equipment for its own use.
The convoy began after a ceremony that included the dedication of a temporary marker for the Zero Milestone on the Ellipse south of the White House (see related story). The vehicles headed north to Gettysburg and traveled the rest of the way to San Francisco on the Lincoln Highway. At each town and city, the convoy was greeted by dignitaries and residents who wanted to see the soldiers and the wondrous vehicles that had helped secure the victory in Europe. The commander of the expedition, Lt. Colonel Charles W. McClure, would address the crowd at each stop and Dr. Johnson would make his presentation on good roads.
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