Bowling Team at Bubby's Bowling Ally. One of hundreds of images donated by the Lyle Johnson Family. Lyle is pictured in the center.
Yet One More Important Image Collection
Added To Archives
The Society has been gifted more than 3,700 individual negatives from the estate of Lyle Johnson. The images were taken by Lyle from the 1930's to 1990's.
Lyle Johnson and his wife Hazel operated Hoff 's store founded in 1887, and a Mt. Horeb Landmark by the time of its closing in 1984. In addition to being a prominent businessman in Mt. Horeb, Mr. Johnson was an avid and prolific amateur photographer, with an eye for artful content and a sense for capturing the "everydayness" of his small-town subjects. His numerous photos depict life in Mt. Horeb from the World War II era through the 1970s, a time period limitedly represented in the historical society's more than 15,000 photo images. One could call Lyle the Alvah Webber of the twentieth century. (Webber is another amateur photographer represented in the society's collections who was a prolific Mt. Horeb photographer in 1899).
A sampling of the photographs in this collection includes: homecoming parades, high school football games, various remodelings of Hoff 's department store, the building of the new Evangelical Lutheran Church in 1960, luncheons of civic organizations and other activities in Hoff's basement, the erection of the new water tower, section by section, and the Christmas department at Hoff's store in the 1960's. Perhaps the most interesting of all, and most historically entertaining, are the images of residents taking part in everyday activities which rarely wind up in photographic images, such as people watching the recent invention of television, a local household auction, Hoff 's employees enjoying a coffee break, community members getting their hair cut at Witte's barber shop, golfing at Norsk Golf Bowl, Bowling at Bubby's Bowling Alley, a fashion show, duck hunting, and a host of other Mt. Horeb area scenes. The collection also includes some photographs taken by Lyle Johnson's father, JB, which date to the 1920's.
Along with Lyle's images the society added momentos form his life to the museum collections that record not only his interests, but which add an additional personality to the images. These include his personalized bowling ball, golf clubs, trophies and the actual photographic equipment he used.
With the recently donated professional images of Cy Burns, this collection, by a prolific armature photographer, adds a whole new historic timeline with a unique dimension to the society's permanent image collections. The Johnson collection is in the process of being stored in archival materials and its subjects identified by a group of community members who either personally knew Lyle or worked at Hoff 's store.
Understanding the importance of this collection the Mt. Horeb Community Foundation has granted the Society $3,500 for the purpose of developing nearly 3,000 images and archival storage of the collection. These images will appear in the Mt. Horeb Mail, this publication and as a Society produced projection show. The Society would like to offer its gratitude to the community for its continued support of our areas history, and other important community causes.