They Call Him "Rambo"

His check has been signed by the Lewis County School District in Tennessee for forty years, but he works for the kids.

Generations of kids know the tall, thin man who always has a smile and encouraging word and who keeps the interior and exterior of their school looking nice as "Rambo", a nickname he earned when he first started working there and was the antithesis of the Sylvester Stallone character.

Why does he enjoy being around the kids? Because he understands what it's like to struggle in school. He was eighteen years old when he was in the eighth grade and didn't graduated high school until he was twenty-two.

Today, he laughs and says, "I was the only eighth grader old enough to vote."

His eight siblings (and anyone else who knew him) never thought he'd be able to live on his own and support himself. They figured the orphanage where he grew up would offer him a charity job of some kind and let him continue to live there.

He proved them all wrong.

Even when he was born, the odds were against him. They call them "preemies" nowadays and provide intensive care for them in Neonatal Intensive Care Units. Not so when Rambo was born. He was tiny enough to fit in a shoebox and when taken home a few days later slept in a dresser drawer rather than a baby bed. That's because he was also born into abject poverty.

The story is told of when he was a couple years old and sleeping in a second-hand baby bed that he was always slipping his head between the slats, and one of his siblings would have to push his head back through.

In his own words, he describes his early life:

The very first memory I have is of my daddy loading me and my eight brothers and sisters in a station wagon, each of us carrying a plastic bag with all the clothes we had, except for my baby sister, Beverly, who was only eighteen months old. My oldest sister, Brenda, who was sixteen and the oldest of all of us, carried hers and Beverly's clothes. Daddy drove us four hundred miles before he finally stopped and put us out and drove off.

None of us knew where we were, least of all me. There were all these two-story brick buildings that were facing each other across a small field. What I would eventually come to understand was that we were at Tennessee Orphan's Home. An orphan's home! Can you believe that?! He just dumped us out and left us there. That's just the way he was.

My younger brother, Lawrence, would be scared at night, and I'd let him get in bed with me. I'd tell him, "Everything's going to be all right."

I don't remember my mama because she died when she was thirty-six and I was three or four. All I know about her is from stories my brothers and sisters have told.

When he was older, he was diagnosed with severe scoliosis and had to wear a brace for a year that went from his neck to his pelvis.

He's a cross between Forest Gump and Dustin Hoffman's character in Rain Man: simple, gentle, and sincere, with a mind for numbers. He knows the birthdates of all his siblings and their children and their children's children.

As far as I know, he's never spoken an unkind or mean word to anyone.

Through the years he's had a girlfriend or two but always found them to be "too much trouble."

At the small country church he attends and leads singing sometimes, he's always been the favored "boy" of all the widow women. And he loves it.

When his family gets together, he's the center of attention, telling familiar tales that seem to have become embellished through the years, but no one minds because they enjoy hearing the hearty laughter of their brother who beat the odds.

Now, he's on the verge of retirement. He may retire, but he'll never be forgotten by the untold numbers of people who remember Rambo trying to cheer them up and encourage them when they were small and scared.

The world would be a better place if there were more people like my brother-in-law, Robert Johnson, in it.