The Beez Brothers

Celeste Johnson was born and raised in Muskogee, Oklahoma and attended Dunbar Elementary School. After graduating from Manual Training High School, she enrolled at the Chicago School of Dance, to pursue her dream of becoming a professional dancer and joining the Katherine Dunham Dance Troupe. However, her plans were altered when she became a bride of eighteen and devoted most of her time to her family of three children. After her children graduated from Oklahoma City University, a decision was made to promote the arts, so they founded Rod-Gi-Bo Productions, each syllable representing a segment of her children's first name. While raising her family, Celeste studied visual arts, via mail correspondence, with the Art Institute of Chicago. When her third child began school, Johnson began work outside the home. She was one of the first to break the color line in Muskogee when she became a saleslady for Calhoun's Department store and the layout artist for their advertising department. Her layout art work was the first time an African-American had anything published in the newspaper. While working at Calhoun's, she founded the Bib House Child Care Center. Years later, she worked as a youth Assistant for Oklahoma State University Extension Center. From there, she became the first Director of the Martin Luther King Center and created many programs that impacted the community. She served on many advisory boards such as WISH, HeadStart, MARC, Muskogee Arts Council, Make Muskogee More Beautiful, Mayor's Teen Task Force, Muskogee Rehabilitation, Upward Bound, Langston University Cooperative, 4-H, Red Cross Bone Marrow, Bacone College, and served five years on the Muskogee School Board. She, also, financed, designed, and oversaw the building of the African Kitchen restaurant in the mall, as well as served as the local and state President of the NAACP. While directing at the child care center, Celeste discovered the validity and value of storytelling and visual arts, and how well they played in the development of children, by helping them cope with their feelings and express themselves. Due to the illness of her husband, she moved to California to be near her children, and as fate would intervene, she discovered that the world-renowned, award-winning, children's author, Gerald McDermott, was a neighbor. They became acquainted and she showed him some of her writings and illustrations for children; he was very pleased with her work and suggested that the book she wrote for children, THE BEEZ BROTHERS, should be published. He became her mentor, as well as a good friend. Sadly, before THE BEEZ BROTHERS was published, her friend and mentor, Gerald McDermott, passed away.