Let me tell you about my brother, Johnny Laine Vessell,

Johnny, better known as Johnboy was so much to so many people that its hard to put it all into words.  I can only give my accounts of the Man he was.  For me, he was much more than a brother, growing up he acted as my dad taking care of me while my mom was working.  He would always make sure that I had everything I needed and I was well taken care of.  He gave me the nickname monkey because i was always hanging around him and his friends.  He was my hero.

He was always there for me growing up, I wasnt very popular in middle school and didnt have many friends.  We were kind of poor even though my mom worked non stop.  Johnboy had his own place at this time and i didnt see him but on weekends and sometimes mom would let me go to his condo and spend the weekend with him and we'd go swimming and stuff.  He knew that I was having a tough time in school and my birthday was coming up and he decided that he was going to throw me a party. Well it ended up being not just a birthday party but the party of the year.  He rented out the clubhouse, invited everyone from school, had more food than you could ever eat, and had hired a band to play at my party. It was his friends band but a band nonetheless.  Everyone came and had a great time and all of a sudden I began to have more and more friends in school and even got a boyfriend that year. 

There are countless stories like that and I could go on and on about my childhood but he wasnt there for me just in my childhood.

As I grew older and began to have children of my own, he was there.  No, not just for support, I mean he was there at the hospital.  When my first daughter Courtney was born he stood outside my hospital room peaking through the blinds to try and get a closer look at his brand new niece being born, unfortunately the nurse saw him and closed the blinds.   When I moved to North Carolina and became pregnant, he left everything behind and came to live with me there and help me thru the pregnancy because my husband was often gone serving our country.  I remember after several false labors, when the real one finally hit he had me flying into that hospital with the maxima on two wheels.  And then with Daneyelle, the same thing, he came to Georgia and helped me through the pregnancy, this time he wasnt at the hospital when I delivered he stayed at home and kept the other two babies and scrubbed my house from top to bottom so that everything would be spotless when I came home from the hospital. And so on for the rest of them.  He has always been there for my kids.  I have had a tough life trying to do right by all of them and make ends meet and he has always helped me along.  He has always made sure that they had everything they needed or wanted.  He has taken them on trips and even brought them to stay a summer with him and his partner in New York...they got to tour the big city, something I never couldve done for them. He was an artist that painted beautiful pictures and has painted beautiful memories with my kids he would always encourage the kids to follow their dreams no matter what.  He was such an inspiration with all the things he had gone through in his life, the pain, the criticism, the sickness.... he always held his head high.  He never let his sickness hold him back from anything.  He was actually going to school to become an ESE teacher to teach art and music to handicap children. That was his dream, a dream he chased till the end.

Christmas was his favorite time of year. I swear he would start buying presents months and months in advanced.  There would be so many presents come Christmas morning that you couldnt even see the tree.  He would have the girls over for a night of baking...cookies, cakes, pies etc.  He would have them do arts and crafts and just spend time with them.  He would have the house and yard decorated, every inch would be lit up and glistening in some form or fashion.  Then on Christmas morning he would have his santa hat on ready to pass out gifts. It was amazing.  I lost my brother last year, two days after Christmas.. I know in my heart that he knew it was coming and asked God to give him just a few more days so that he could celebrate Christmas with us just one  more time. Thats just the way he was.  

Last December, I didnt just lose a brother, I lost something much more great than that... I lost the rock of my foundation. something I can never replace.

I will love him always, my brother Johnny Laine Vessell