Interview of a Lifetime

As I mentioned in my last blog post, Caroline and I met an extremely interesting man on a ghost tour last week. In setting up our interview, he recommended that we meet him and his wife at his house as it was built in the late 1700s. Over the course of our stay, we had become more and more interested in the history of the city and it's inhabitants, so we jumped at the opportunity. When they bought and renovated their home, it was the last one on the block to be restored, and it was absolutely gorgeous. Sitting in the cozy sitting room, we interviewed both husband and wife about their younger days, what led them to Savannah in the first place, their role in the community, and much more. They told us about how they both started off as teachers teaching on the West side of Chicago and ended up traveling, in a sail boat of all things, across the the Atlantic ocean to Europe. Can you believe it?? On top of all this, they both personally knew many of the people involved in the Savannah murder scandal as chronicled by the international best seller "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil". In fact, Mrs. Johnson even knew the author, John Berendt, when he began to write his international best seller and even helped him edit it! The couple told us story after story, which were quite star-studded, of their fascinating lives. They are prominent members of the Savannah community who actively fight against making their beloved city overly-commercialized by the tourism industry. They agreed that the tourism that was brought to the city by Berendt's famed novel was extremely beneficial for the economy and the community as a whole but that the line had to be drawn somewhere. You'll be able to read more about the amazing couple in our final piece!