Texan's five grand daughters valdictorians

Houston Chronicle:

When it comes to playing the proud grandparent bragging rights game, Arnold Johnson sits down at the table with five aces up his sleeve — five granddaughters who have been the valedictorians of their graduating classes.

The first to graduate with top honors was Sarah Benton, the 2002 Flatonia High School valedictorian. She was followed by her sister Rebekah Benton in 2004 and then their cousin Kallie Arrington, the valedictorian of Riverton High School in Pavilion, Wyo., in 2005.

This year was a bumper crop with Megan Arrington recognized as the top graduate at Riverton High, while cousin Karla Johnson received the same honors from El Campo High School.

The two people the girls have most in common are their grandparents Arnold Johnson and his late wife, Norma Galow Johnson. Johnson fondly remembers the girls spending portions of their summer vacations in his home in the Ganado area.

"I tell people that the girls got all their smarts from me because I don't have any left," he jokes. "But actually a lot of the credit has to go to their parents and my wife. They would stay with us and she'd read to them and let them 'help' her in the kitchen.

'They'd do a lot of the measuring and mixing, and she always encouraged them even if it did make things take a couple of hours longer to do than normal. She didn't want to discourage their wanting to find things out, discourage them from learning."

While the teaching was subtle, the granddaughters now realize how valuable that attention was growing up.

"Grandma read to us every day," Sarah said. "And Granddad would play dominoes with us so we had to learn to count and our uncle would play Yahtzee and we'd have more counting to do. We played a lot of games, and looking back, most of them encouraged learning."

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There is more. It sounds like they also must have had a pretty good gene pool.