The people who knew Johnnie Freeze considered him a creative genius.
He could do anything with a welding torch, and most of his inventions, such as the log-splitter he built back in the 1960s, were designed to help him on the farm or solve a problem for his farming friends.
“He fixed a lot of broken things,” daughter Sheila Freeze says.
Before his death from leukemia in 1994, Johnnie Freeze had lived his dream. He wanted his own farm, a large family and expected all of his children to have a college education.
Freeze’s dairy farm grew at one point to where he was milking 200 cows a day.
He and his wife, Ruth, raised seven children, including six daughters. All earned college degrees.
Besides farming, Johnnie Freeze worked many years as a welder and welding supervisor for Gamewell Mechanical.
Sheila Freeze says her father was honorable, generous, ingenious and hardworking. He was always involved in his children’s lives. His definitely was a life well lived.
But there’s more to Johnnie Freeze’s story, things that men of his generation usually kept to themselves ó their selfless service in World War II.
Freeze was probably the first Rowan County man to earn the Legion of Merit, an award recently given to Rowan native Barry Perry.
Perry’s work with Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense saved the Marine Corps $97.3 million and prevented U.S. soldiers from entering combat zones unprepared.
Freeze, a master sergeant and head mechanic for the “Checkertail Clan” fighter squadron, invented an emergency release for coolant shutter doors on P-51 aircraft.
Previously, the shutter doors only operated automatically.
Freeze’s device allowed the shutter doors to be controlled manually from the cockpit, helping to eliminate engine overheating or complete engine failure when the automatic feature failed.
His invention was later installed as standard equipment on planes of that type.
It saved a lot of lives.
Johnnie Freeze was the seventh of nine children and the only one in his family to graduate from high school ó Landis High in 1937.
Four boys from his family served in World War II. His youngest brother, Raymond, lost his life with the U.S. Navy.
After Johnnie graduated from high school, he worked three years as a weaver for Cannon Mills in Kannapolis, then opened a service station on N.C. 152, owning and operating the business for more than a year before enlisting in February 1942.
He attended a service school at Packard Motor Co. in Detroit that focused on Rolls Royce engines. He eventually became engineering chief for one of the busiest fighter groups in the war.
An Associated Press dispatch reported that Freeze was one of 26 North Carolinians in an Army Air Force P-40 Warhawk group serving in the Mediterranean theater.
The fighter group set a record of successfully escorting more than 1,100 medium bombers over targets in Italy without losing a plane.
By its 100th mission, the group had destroyed 102 enemy aircraft.
Freeze spent most of the war in Italy, with stints in Sicily and North Africa. Sheila Freeze said her father also made some of the first shuttle runs into Russia and bombed Romanian oilfields.
When he came home, Freeze had earned the Legion of Merit, Air Medal, Good Conduct Medal, Unit Citation with two Oak Leaf Clusters, European battle ribbons and 10 participation Battle Stars.
His overseas duty had covered three years, six months and 17 days.
Johnnie married Ruth shortly after his discharge. The couple bought a farm in western Rowan County near Mooresville and, besides tending to a dairy herd, grew soybeans, cotton and grains.
Several NASCAR drivers later showed a strong interest in the Freeze farm, given its location. Some of them landed their private planes in Johnnie’s pasture with his permission.
After Johnnie’s death, Ruth Freeze sold the entire place to Dale Earnhardt in 1996. She came to know the driver from his frequent visits to negotiate. He had a particular fondness for pinto beans and cornbread.
Sheila Freeze says she and her siblings seldom heard Johnnie Freeze talk about the war. Their father was the man who taught them how to drive the tractor and operate all the farm machinery.
He was the man who was warm and cuddly, pushing them to do well in school.
“And his passion was farming,” Sheila says.
In 1947, Johnnie Freeze seriously injured himself trying to help a fellow farmer pull his tractor out of the mud.
The accident paralyzed his right leg, and operations over the next five years could not help. The leg was amputated in 1953, replaced by an artifical limb.
Many people never realized he had lost the leg until it was mentioned at his funeral more than 40 years later.
Sheila Freeze says the family found a lot of her father’s war-time photographs, medals and service records in a green envelope stuck away in a drawer.
Once, for a school history project, her nephew built a handsome case to display several of Johnnie’s medals and pictures.
On the back of one of the photographs, Johnnie wrote, “This is how I looked before taking off for Russia, except for heavy clothes. I love to fly.”
Years later on his farm, Johnnie battled what he thought was a nagging cold or flu while trying to fence in about 80 acres. Doctors soon diagnosed the leukemia and ordered him to begin chemotherapy.
After his first round of treatment, Johnnie begged his doctor to release him so he could finish the fencing. When he arrived home, he went straight to his tractor and back to work, much to the exasperation of Ruth and his children.
One good leg, a terminal illness, sick from chemotherapy, and the only thing on his mind was that fence.
But if you knew Johnnie Freeze and the Americans like him who grew up in the Depression, served heroically in World War II, then rebuilt the country on their return ó the Greatest Generation ó you probably understand.