In Memory

Johnny Nooner

Johnny Nooner

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Birth: Nov. 30, 1970
Death: Sep. 15, 1990

Jonathon "Johnny" Wayne Nooner died 9/15/1990, Sheridan; Survived: Parents, R.J. and Marilyn Nooner; Brother, Glynn Nooner; Grandfather, W.Q. Benton; Interment: Memorial Gardens Cemetery, Sheridan; ag9/18/1990
 
Burial:
Memorial Gardens Cemetery
Sheridan
Grant County
Arkansas, USA



 
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09/19/08 07:19 PM #1    

Jamie Gartman

Johnny passed in September 1990.

09/21/08 09:53 AM #2    

Crystal Clark (Woods)

My memories of Johnny go all the way back to elementary school. Such a sweet boy. Does anyone remember when his parents bought the old Logan's grocery store, and it became Nooner's? My mother shopped there, and I was enthralled with Johnny's father because I thought he looked like Richard Gere!

09/21/08 04:10 PM #3    

Stacy Cunningham (Gilbert)

My memories of both Mike and Johnny go back to Kindergarden as well. Ms. Clinton's class. We were buddies!! Momma used to laugh at me because she would walk into my room and I would be reading a book while on the phone...she would whisper..."Is that Johnny?" I would nod....she knew that he would talk on and on about his four/three wheeler rides that day and I would just sit there for hours!! I would love for him to be able to tell me one of those stories now.

09/21/08 09:29 PM #4    

Jamie Gartman

My memories of Johnny go back to 1st grade. His was the first birthday party I ever got invited to from one of my school buddies. Then we grew up playing baseball together(Or against each other. I don't think we were ever on the same team). We didn't really hang out in the same group in high school, but we stayed friends and would hang out together and go riding around in that big red truck of his.

I'm not in that area often, but when I do go by Geyer Springs road, I always think about all the times I went cruising out there with several friends and then I always think about why all that stopped. So senseless. I think it was the first time most of us had been hit by that kind of violence. We had lost people to car wrecks and that sort of thing, but not something like this. It was only a year after high school and it was like a rude introduction to the real world where not everything is parties and playing. And unfortunately, not all fights are handled with your fists.

Sadly, that's become Johnny's legacy. But, we should try to remember him for the friend he was for the 19 years he was here.

09/22/08 04:36 PM #5    

Aaron Wilson

Johnny and I spent a lot of time together during the summer and after school throughout our middle school years. His granny lived just around the corner from me and we were a 4 minute walk away from their family's grocery store (three minutes if you cut across the railroad tracks and through the trailer park between Chief Gas and Roy's Barber Shop).

We would often push each other around the store on a flatbed cart with a cardboard box over the rider so he couldn't see where he was going. Johnny & Glen pushed me right inside the walk-in cooler once as a joke.

On a good day, Johnny would walk you through the checkout line and ask you that highly anticipated question, "You wanna get sompin'?" This meant you could have your pick of any piece of candy you wanted. Johnny would show it to the cashier and they'd write it down on a piece of paper. I can only guess how many times Mr. & Mrs. Nooner gathered those slips of paper to total up hundreds of dollars in coke & candy costs, compliments of their generous son.

We'd often go by Uncle Henry's, which was then a small trailer parked in the lot beside Chief Gas. I'd get something traditional - Coconut or Tooty Fruity - and Johnny would live on the edge by ordering a Pink Panther or a Grasshopper. We'd carry our cold treats down the abandoned railroad tracks and walk all the way down (seemed like miles!) to the railroad bridge where we'd play a daring game.

In this game, each guy would think of a girl's name and say it out loud. Then, you'd throw the rock down the length of the bridge. Nine times out of ten, the rock would fall down between the crossties into the dried up creek bed below, but IF you defied the odds and your rock stayed on top of a crosstie, you lost the game and had to call the girl who's name you'd just declared. Of course, we rarely held each other to it.

Johnny and I - as many of us do - went our own ways during high school, but I have many memories along with the rest of you, where we played baseball with him, cupball in his swimming pool, "rocked" his pool, played softball behind Raymond Dale's house, rode three wheelers (Curt Lucas was the only one with a FOUR wheeler) in the woods that are since long gone now, played pool downstairs in his house and so on.

Jamie alluded to Geyer Springs. I've often driven through the intersection of Geyer and Baseline in what is now the highest crime rated zip code in Arkansas and I never fail to think of Johnny's murder that had to be the beginning of the events (if not THE VERY THING) that changed the face of Southwest Little Rock forever.

Thanks for letting me drop in.

Aaron S. Wilson
www.iamchief.blogspot.com
www.sheridanclassof88.blogspot.com

09/24/08 02:02 PM #6    

Marcy Dreher

I don't know how many times I've started writing in this comment section and then erased it. But I'll try again. I have so many memories of Johnny in school, in class and hanging out at the courthouse cruising around and talking at the sonic. I will never ever forget that night at Geyer as I was there and remember talking to him after David Herbert put him the car before we took him to the hospital. That was a very hard thing. I agree with Aaron and Jamie, that was the night Geyer's was shut down and its cruising days were over. And I too think of that night everytime I go down Geyer.

09/26/08 01:45 PM #7    

Lana Lisenbey (Erb)

There are so many memories that I have of Johnny Nooner and they are all wonderful, he was so sweet and thoughtful and had great parents. I rode around with him a week before he got killed and its very weird now to me but he talked about death, almost like he knew that he wasnt going to be here much longer. He was also hopeful about his future and starting college and majoring in criminal justice..I think about him often and can't believe how long it has been. In 10th grade we use to stay up so late talking on the phone and the next day he would pick me up for school, always right on time..God bless you.

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