Walking With Grandpa John Frank Warner
In the early 1950’s when Johnny Warner was a small lad, he begged to go to Grandpa’s house. There’s nothing that unusual about a little boy wanting to be with his Grandpa, especially in the south. Little boys have always spent time with their grandparents, walking around right in their footsteps, mimicking everything they said and did. Those of you who didn’t have this opportunity really missed a lot.
At the tender age of six, when most little fellows are getting ready for school, Johnny Warner was starting to a different school. He began accompanying his grandpa into the woods on the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee. He watched as his Pa dug ‘sain’, dried it and made medicine out of it.
The elderly Warner had the same name as his grandson, John Warner, but he had something else much more valuable. He had the knowledge of the traditional medicinal uses of the trees, weeds, wildflowers and other plants. He knew what they looked like, where they grew and what they were good for.
Grandpa Warner took little Johnny with him every time he got a chance and pretty soon, the grandson could find ginseng, yellow dock root and wild indigo as well as grandpa could. He became more and more at home in the woods. Pretty soon, people in Cumberland County, Tennessee were talking about the “herbalist”, Johnny Warner.
Today, Warner gives complete credit to his grandpa, long since gone to meet his maker. “I will never forget all the good times we had together and I also want to thank my mother and father, Everett F. and Cora Lee Warner, for letting me spend so much time with grandpa,” he said.
Warner also gives a lot back to the rural communities in and around his beloved Tennessee. His herb walks and seminars kept him pretty busy those days and you would never know when you might see him on TV, talking about how we can gain a better sense of our relationship to the natural world when we better understand the medicinal uses of nature’s herbs.