Leon Johnson sat in front of his house on Broadway in South Portland most days for a decade. Since his death last year, many people miss seeing him and his friendly waves. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

It didn’t appear that Leon Johnson was doing very much.

He sat in a lawn chair in front of his home on Broadway in South Portland for hours at a time on most days during the past decade. Sometimes he waved to people as thousands of cars streamed past. Sometimes drivers honked at him. People definitely noticed him.

In May, one of the people who always waved to Johnson – but didn’t know his name – went on Facebook to ask about him. Angela Drinkwater wrote that she hadn’t seen him in a while and wondered if anyone knew why he hadn’t been out yet.

More than 90 people replied, including many who had the same question. A couple people knew Johnson’s name. Some knew that he had died in August 2023 at the age of 87. Most shared how much they looked forward to seeing Johnson and how his daily presence, with a smile and a wave, touched them.

The comments on Facebook, and from people interviewed for this story, make it clear that Johnson was indeed doing something while he sat by the roadside for hours at a time. He was spreading joy.

“He always looked at me directly. He made me feel like we were friends, like he knew me,” said Linda Parker, 69, of South Portland, who runs a child care center. “I never would have dreamed of going by there without slowing down to look for him, without honking. It meant something to me.”

It meant something to Johnson, too, said his sister, Ellen Belanger. Belanger remembers being with Johnson when cars honked at him. She asked him if he knew the honkers. He said no, but he liked to wave at them anyway.

Johnson also got postcards mailed from people who saw him day after day. They were sometimes addressed to “Man in the Chair.” One woman wrote to tell Johnson how much she and her children liked driving by Broadway and waving to him. A woman from Scarborough sent him a postcard about once a month for a while. Even with that kind of attention, Johnson probably didn’t realize how many people he made smile.

“I think he’d be thrilled, but he would also be shocked,” Belanger said. “He pretty much wanted to stay out there all the time. Not that it was bad in the house, he just wanted to see movement.”

Ollie LaChapelle, left, Ellen Belanger and Linda Parker surround the chair that Leon Johnson sat in most days for a decade outside his Broadway home. Belanger is Johnson’s sister while the other two are South Portland residents who miss seeing Johnson. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

Johnson died on Aug. 29, 2023, at Mercy Hospital. He was born in Portland, one of seven children. After graduating from South Portland High School, he worked for a civil engineering firm, surveying land for construction projects. He liked that job and especially enjoyed being outside all day, his sister said. He was drafted into the Army in the late 1950s. During his service, he got into an accident – Belanger didn’t know the details – and, upon returning to Maine, never drove again.

Leon Johnson. Photo courtesy of Ellen Belanger

So he walked all over Portland and South Portland and took buses. He married Phyllis Mercer in 1966 and adopted her son, Lance. Tragedy struck the family twice in a little more than a decade. Lance was about 8 years old when a car struck him and crushed him against another car, Belanger said, requiring years of surgeries and medical care. In 1979, Phyllis died after being diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Belanger said her brother’s resolve and steady demeanor helped him deal with the “turmoil” of his son’s accident and his wife’s death.

“He was a very quiet man, but if he made up his mind to do something, you couldn’t change his mind,” said Belanger, 83.

Johnson later worked in an automotive warehouse and at Portland frozen foods maker Barber Foods. He was an enthusiastic sports fan, rooting especially hard for the Boston Celtics and New England Patriots. In the 1970s, he owned a race horse at Scarborough Downs with one of his brothers. When his brother lived in Florida, Johnson would visit him once a year, and together they went to University of Florida football games. Some of the people who posted on Facebook about Johnson noted that he was often wearing Florida Gators gear when he took up his post on Broadway.

Johnson also enjoyed spending time at the Maine Mall, taking the bus there to sit in the food court and talk with some friends, his sister said. One woman posted on his obituary page that she saw him often at the mall, before she started her work day, and that he would always save his newspaper for her.

HARD TO MISS

Johnson was a little camera shy, so his family doesn’t have many photos of him, and none of him sitting in front of his home, Belanger said. But the city of South Portland does, in its assessors’ records online. Johnson sat in front of the house so often that he was there when the photo of the property happened to be taken.

The house Johnson lived in is a little west of Route 1 on Broadway, which is the main east-west thoroughfare in the city, connecting the Maine Mall retail area with the Willard Beach neighborhood and Southern Maine Community College. At rush hour, the traffic near Route 1 often slows to a crawl, so drivers had plenty of time to notice Johnson.

Parker said keeping an eye out for Johnson while driving to work or doing errands sort of evolved over the years into “something that South Portland people do.”

Leon Johnson sat in front of his Broadway home daily. He’s seen here in a photo taken for the South Portland assessor’s database. Photo courtesy of City of South Portland

Drinkwater first saw Johnson while driving from her home on the west side of the city to her job as general manager of Elsmere BBQ, near the Cape Elizabeth line. She was so impressed and fascinated with his consistency that she told her mother, who lives in Florida, about him. She said seeing him every day made her wonder about him and want to know more.

“My mom said I should just stop by some time. But I was terrified to just pull up, on this busy street and start talking to him,” said Drinkwater, 45. “I was so curious about him. He was very consistent. I think consistency is key to this life.”

Then this spring, when Drinkwater expected to see Johnson in his chair after his usual winter hiatus, he wasn’t there. She knew he was old, and she became worried. So she posted her query on the private Facebook group South Portland Friends and Neighbors. Parker saw Drinkwater’s post and thanked her for it, saying she’d been worried about Johnson too.  She called his passing “so very sad” but said she’d “honk and wave in his memory” when she passed his house.

People posted their specific memories of seeing Johnson, expressed hopes that he enjoyed watching cars whiz by and being honked at, and shared their thoughts on what his presence meant to them.

Ollie LaChapelle, 75, of South Portland, posted that she had given “many beeps & waves to him” over the years. “Human gestures, shared by many strangers over (the) years was proof of caring, even from a distance,” she wrote.

LaChapelle said in an interview she often drove past Johnson’s house with her husband, Jim LaChapelle. They’d usually honk the horn. Sometimes they’d holler “How ya doin?” or “Good to see ya!” Later, Jim became serious ill with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and couldn’t leave the house. He spent a lot of time in his favorite chair in their living room, looking out the window and watching people go by. After Jim died in 2021 at the age of 76, LaChapelle said many neighbors stopped to tell her how much they missed seeing her husband in the window, day after day.

“I never pass by Mr. Johnson’s house without thinking of him, nor step up onto my own deck, peering in, thinking of my Jim,” LaChapelle said.

After reading the 90-plus replies to her Facebook query, Drinkwater said she was surprised and touched to learn how many people shared an affection for Johnson. And to see how many happy memories Johnson had left behind.

“It just goes to show how much something as small as a wave or a smile can turn someone’s day around,” said Drinkwater. “He was always there, and I always looked forward to seeing him and wondered what his story was. I just drove by (the house) a couple days ago, and he popped into my head.”