For the Love of a Grandmother

Welcome to Women Honoring the West!

It’s my pleasure to introduce Tempe Javitz, a Western woman who hails from Southern California. She a creative not only with words but with photos, like her grandmother.

Let’s meet Tempe!

I grew up on a cattle ranch. What a childhood it was.

My two older sisters monitored me as I rode to the roundup at age four on a lead rope, then followed them into the future of taming colts, riding the fences looking for breaks, and checking that the salt licks had plenty of blocks. Our ranch in southeastern Montana was not far from the Wyoming border and views of the Bighorn Mountains.

Although I relished that outdoor life, I was sure I didn’t want to be a rancher’s wife and deal with the ups
and downs of that economy. Hence, my taking off for the West Coast for college and marrying a Californian. Nonetheless, you will find me every summer back in Montana and Wyoming enjoying my sister’s ranch, and hugging all of those extraordinary horses, calves, and even sheep.

My father’s mother, Jessamine Spear Johnson, was a marvelous photographer, and her photos hung on the walls of our home alongside other local (and well-known) male artists. When my grandmother died in 1978, her photo collection was stored in my parents’ basement.

My delight then, as a visiting adult from California, was to review and contemplate her artistry. A few years later, my aunt Annabelle gave me Jessamine’s surviving diaries, and an adventure was born.

Being a busy insurance agent, mom, and wife, I didn’t take on this task until retirement in 2007. Then I spent years with 35 boxes of negatives and prints scanning and preserving her legacy. In the afternoons I read the diaries and kept notes. To my delight, the South Dakota Historical Society Press agreed to publish my book, “Bighorn Visions, the Photography of Jessamine Spear Johnson,” in April of 2023.

I was going to make my grandmother famous again (She was well-known during her lifetime, but long since forgotten.)

I have published articles in the Big Horn City Historical Society’s newsletter and the Sheridan Historical
Society’s newsletter, plus the history of the Spear O Ranch for the Montana Stockgrowers’ 125th anniversary book, entitled “The Weak Ones Turned Back, The Cowards Never Started,” edited by Linda Grosskopt and Nancy Morrison.

My article on Jessamine for Montana, the Magazine of Western History, won the Wrangler Award for a magazine article in 2021 from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Center in Oklahoma City. This was followed up by a photo essay in Cowboys and Indians Magazine’s February/March 2022 photo issue.

My writing career at the moment is creating blogs for my website to share more of my family’s ranching history and Jessamine’s photos.

Photos by Jessamine Spear Johnson

In 2024, while recuperating from back surgery, I had to miss three amazing award ceremonies. First, the
National Cowboy and Western Heritage Center awarded my book as the photo book of 2023. Then my
book was awarded a Will Rogers Medallion Award-third place (bronze medal) in photographic essays
for the year 2023.

Lastly, to my delight, the Wyoming Historical Society awarded my book a second place in non-fiction for 2023 at their 2024 annual meeting.

What more could a cowgirl-author want!

About Tempe

Tempe Javitz grew up in southeastern Montana at the Spear O Ranch in Kirby, Montana. From fourth grade through high school, she attended Sheridan, Wyoming schools. She graduated from Scripps College, Claremont, California, with a BA in English Literature and a minor in Humanities (1971) and that winter married Hal Javitz.

They moved to Berkeley, where Tempe worked as a sales rep for the AAA auto club. In 1979 she opened her own State Farm agency in Palo Alto and managed it for 27.5 years. At the same time, she raised two children and participated in many organizations, including the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce, the American Association of University Women, Colonial Dames, and the DAR.

Tempe is the granddaughter of Montana photographer Jessamine Spear Johnson. Born
in 1886 to pioneer parents on the eastern front of the Bighorn Mountains, Jessamine
grew up to document many of the dramatic changes that this region would see
over the next century

Like her grandmother, Tempe has been an avid photographer since childhood. Photography and
travel are her passions, however, travel frequently puts her writing career on the back burner.

Connect with Tempe

Facebook

Website

Buy Tempe’s Book

Blog

I’d like to invite you to check out Jessamine Spear Johnson photos and Tempe’s blogs and let us know what your favorites are.