Welcome to Call to Decision 

 American Minute with Bill Federer

 March 18

 70-years-old, he visited his friend William Worth one evening, ate
 some milk and bread, read out loud from the Bible, laid down on the
 floor to sleep and never woke up.

 This was how John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, died on
 MARCH 18, 1845.

 Johnny Appleseed's father, Nathaniel, was a Minuteman who fought the
 British at Concord in 1775.

 Johnny Appleseed collected seeds from apple cider presses in western
 Pennsylvania and planted nurseries from the Alleghenies to central
 Ohio, giving thousands of seedlings to westward bound pioneers.

 He lived at harmony with Indians, bringing them medicinal plants.

 During the War of 1812, Johnny Appleseed heard the British had
 incited an Indian attack, so he ran 30 miles from Mansfield to Mount
 Vernon, Ohio, to warn settlers.

 Bare foot, wearing a mush pan over his eccentric long hair and an old
 coffee sack over his shoulders, Johnny Appleseed had a unique devotion
 to nature and the Bible.

 He called an apple blossom a "living sermon from God" and often
 quoted the Sermon on the Mount.

 Poet William Henry Venable wrote:

 "Remember Johnny Appleseed -

 All ye who love the apple -

 He served his kind by word and deed -

 In God's grand greenwood chapel."