A 23-year-old school teacher, Lenora Johnson, became known as “Two-Gun Lenora” in 1932.
She was in the living quarters of Piute School Number Three near Beatty in Klamath County when she heard early-morning noise inside the school house. A couple of drunks had stumbled into the building and were “tearing up the place,” she told the sheriff later.
Johnson ordered them out, but they paid no attention. Grabbing a pair of pistols, Johnson fired from both hands into the floor at the men’s feet. When they still wouldn’t stop, she fired higher at George and Leonard Godowa, hitting George in the legs. That was enough to scare away the vandals.
George went to the hospital and the teacher rang her 9 o’clock school bell, starting school as if nothing had happened.
Johnson had told the sheriff two weeks earlier that prowlers were pestering her. Officers gave her two automatic .32 caliber guns and told her to aim for the legs of the perpetrators to prevent their escape.
A few weeks later, after newspapers across the nation had printed “Two-Gun Lenora’s” story, the Klamath News wrote an editorial warning the incident wasn’t good for tourism.
Source: Helfrich, Devere and Helen. Sprague River Valley. Klamath Echoes, 1974, pp. 73-74. Klamath County Historical Society.
