By Frances Stebbins, Correspondent
[This is a memory from the many decades the author has been privileged to write for daily and weekly newspapers circulating in Western Virginia.]
Until the past July, I knew little or nothing about St. Croix, a United States possession which is one of the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Ocean off the state of Florida. That changed when Annie Johnston, a retired Registered Nurse with a French accent, came to worship at the Salem church I attend.
After introducing myself, I gave her my email address on her second Sunday with us. She responded in the same manner, and the education for both of us began.
I learned that Annie Johnston and her retired physician husband, Dan Johnston, had moved to the Green Hill Park area of Roanoke County in 2020; they did so for their retirement years to escape the ever-present threat of damaging hurricanes and because of the prevalence of good medical care in the Roanoke Valley.
For their later years home, they found a rambling structure dating from 1776 on three acres near the park; it was once in less-inclusive days a center for Jewish social life. Later, it was renovated and used as a venue for such events as wedding receptions.
Its date of construction surely marks it as one of the oldest usable structures in these parts.
Annie Johnston in the move to Salem had decided to alter her church affiliation; she is preparing to be accepted into my own. And so, I have become a sort of mentor to her while she, in turn, has educated me to her story.
Her family is originally from Italy, but in the era of the dictator Benito Mussolini they migrated to the city of Montpelier in Southern France. It is the site of a historic medical school; Annie Johnston, now 71, grew up there speaking French. Today her command of English spoken and written is remarkably good.
At the medical school she met Dan Johnston, a native of North Carolina, who had come there for graduate studies. Finding that a General Practitioner was needed on the Caribbean Island of St. Croix, the Johnstons moved there and for the next 30 years operated a clinic.
Her elderly mother, Emma Viche, still lives in France. An adult son came to the United States several years ago.
When she read my recent column on clergy ministering to inmates of state and local jails, Annie Johnston recalled that her husband in his practice visited the jail that served St. Croix. It was dirty and hot in the semi-tropical climate with the inmates often too poor to receive any care when ill.
In fact, the retired nurse recalled, St. Croix was a dangerous place to live. For a time, the Johnstons, who had a home near the beautiful beach where cruise ships may stop, boarded a young lawyer.
He was greatly concerned about the inhumane conditions in the prisons and tried in vain to prevail on the governing authorities to help inmates secure health insurance. Annie Johnston said the young man eventually moved to France where she surmised that he found more acceptance of his liberal views.
“The level of unsolved crimes in the Virgin Islands is high,” Johnston wrote me, noting that their clinic’s office was broken into, and murders were common in the community of Dr. Johnston’s office.
“I felt fortunate that we escaped those violent crimes. I always thought it was going to happen any time.”
She surmised that the fact that her husband served prisoners and others impoverished may have protected the couple.
In the course of our acquaintance, I discovered that Salem’s new resident was surprised at the degree of racial separation that still exists in much of the Southeastern parts of the United States. Coming from the Caribbean, where many residents are descendants of slaves transported there for commercial purposes some 300 years ago, she is familiar with the poverty of much of the island of Haiti.
She connected with the work of Salem physician Tom Fame and a group from the Roman Catholic parish Our Lady of Perpetual Help which has built a school there.
Johnston also recalled her naturalization ceremony last year which she underwent in order to vote against Donald Trump. She explained that since the Virgin Islands are a possession of the United States, rather than a state, residents of St. Croix are permitted to cast ballots only for their governors.
That fact was new to me.