THE WAUPACA COUNTY POST

September 17, 1992

 

WHEN THEN WAS NOW

By Wayne A. Guyant

 

            This is a story about an occupation that one could think came right out of a Wild West Show.  It is about L. W. “Bill” Johnson, and his wife, Frances Y. “Fran” Johnson, both champions in their own right.

            Lane Walter Johnson was born September 20, 1900, in Assumption, Ill., a son of Ray and Gertrude Johnson.  He attended the schools in Assumption and graduated from the University of Illinois.

            Johnson came to Waupaca in 1930, and it was here on July 9, 1932, that he was united in marriage to Frances Yvonne Zitelberger.  She was born February 15, 1908, in Almena, a daughter of Matt and Mary (Bichelmier) Zitelberger.

            When not on tour, the Johnsons made their home in Waupaca, at 218 East Lake Street, until the death of Mrs. Johnson on November 9, 1951.  She is buried in the Waupaca Lakeside Cemetery.  On February 14, 1953, L.W. Johnson was married again, to Norma Rasmussen in Madison, and in 1968 they moved to their farm near Scandinavia.  Mr. Johnson died December 24, 1987, and was buried in the Scandinavia Lutheran Cemetery.  His widow, Mrs. Norma Johnson, still lives on Rasmussen Drive, Scandinavia.

            For 36 years, L.W. Johnson was a noted exhibition shooter for the Remington Arms Company, and his wife Fran was a national pistol champion in the 1930s and held the Wisconsin State skeet and trap championship for many years.  She set many pistol records in 1937 and 1938, and has claimed women’s handicap championships.

            Fran Johnson and her husband traveled as a shooting team for 11 years throughout the country.  She demonstrated all types of small caliber guns and ammunition before approximately three million servicemen during World War II.  The shooting pair visited more than 300 army camps, giving approximately 1,400 demonstrations and averaging four exhibitions a day from 1941 to 1945.

            In the Waupaca County Post, dated August 1, 1946, there was this account about Waupaca’s “Shooting Pair”:

            “Mr. and Mrs. L. W. Johnson, Shooting Bill Johnson who was just plain Bill and Fran around these parts, returned recently from an extensive tour of the eastern states.  The Johnson made a neat living knocking the centers out of bulls-eyes with rifles, shotguns and pistols, and tricks like drawing pictures with a series of bullet holes.  All of which would make an exciting existence for almost anyone, but which, the Johnsons declared, gets a bit monotonous after a while.

            “Right now (1946) traffic is one of their problems.  To avoid congested highways between Wisconsin and the east they swung northward toward Canada, only to find the roads just as crowded with cars as in the states.

            “Right now they are making up a schedule of appearances for a western tour.  Next winter they will be back in the south, but not in a certain part of Texas, that they visited during the war years.

            “Sand” said Bill, speaking of the Texas stop, “sand isn’t so bad when it is blowing around, but in that certain part of Texas it was blowing gravel.  I had to borrow a pair of flyer’s goggles to finish out the exhibition, and the gravel made dents in our windshield.  We ate sand, shook it out of our clothes, wiped it off the woodwork.  The whole country seemed to get up and move before the Texas wind.”

            Shooter Bill Johnson also hosted a television show, “The Wisconsin Hunter.”  Mr. and Mrs. Johnson made a motion picture short for Paramount Studios in 1941, when two mobile units from Hollywood filmed the picture on the Shambeau’s farm northeast of town.  The short was one of a series of “Unusual Occupations.”  The Johnsons retired from the exhibition field in the fall of 1949.