With museum in place, Temple prepares to leave Lake City

LaDonna Temple is the last of her family to leave Lake City.
But as Temple prepares to move to Texas, to be closer to her son and to enjoy the warmer weather, she can look back at the legacy her family has left here.
Her grandfather came to the town in the 1930s, and her uncle, Roy Johnson, returned to the town many years later, after a career as a truck driver in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Temple was close to Johnson, who had no children, and convinced her uncle to leave significant bequests to the Lake City Community Center and Lake City Public Library when he died.
“It’s been good,” Temple said of overseeing the restoration of the community center’s second floor, as well as the creation of the military history display there. “I’m glad to see it finish. It’s hard for me to let go of this town. And this project.”
The military memorabilia display – everything from scrapbooks of news clippings to World War I, World War II and modern-era uniforms – is a fitting use of the building, which was constructed in 1920 as a testament to the veterans of the first World War. A women’s club in town looked at the memorial statues other towns were erecting to honor veterans and thought they could do better. 
Read more in the March 8 edition.