Wilmer’s Secret Box: Reflections on My Father’s Life^☆ 

This paper was presented (with the box) at the Ninth International Congress for Qualitative Inquiry, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, May 18, 2013.

My father John Wilmer Johnson (1906–1995) died in 1995, but two years later a box of his personal effects was discovered in the attic. On the top of this 11″×6″×3″ box he had written “Everything in this box was, at one time, very important to me,” and he signed his name with the date June 14, 1983. Below this handwritten message was another; “Some of these things don’t seem so important now,” signed with his initials, and the date May 2, 1986. Below this another statement, “These seem even less important now,” dated 1995, the year of his death in November. What did this box contain? The contents are here remembered.