Dewey Johnson memorial finds new home

The memorial honoring the service of a local Marine who died in an ill-fated mission in a Middle Eastern desert has found a new home in East Dublin. 

The granite marker memorializing Staff Sgt. Dewey Johnson, and seven others who died during the same operation, which has been for years hidden from public view behind the old Dublin-Laurens Museum was recently moved to the traffic island at the U.S. 319, U.S. 80 and Ga. 29 split beneath the flag pole near city hall.

“He was from East Dublin. I made arrangements with the city, and we got it moved,” said Scott Thompson, the local lawyer and historian charged with disseminating the museum’s collection since its closure earlier this year. “It was the only right thing to do, find it a permanent home.” 

The memorial, a granite pillar adorned with a bronze plaque, was commissioned in 1982 to honor the life of Johnson, who was killed just two years before during Operation Eagle Claw. 

The monument was posted at the Dublin-Laurens Museum, then housed in downtown Dublin’s Carnegie Library building. After the museum was moved, the marker was removed as well, and tucked away in the backyard of the museum’s new home on Bellevue Avenue. 

Johnson, a native of Laurens County, joined the military when he was 17 years old. In 1979, he was married with two children and stationed in North Carolina at a Marine Corps air station working in helicopter maintenance. That same year, Iran’s monarch-style government collapsed during the Iranian Revolution and 53 people were taken hostage in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. 

President Jimmy Carter ordered a top-secret rescue attempt, and Johnson, along with 179 other servicemen, volunteered for the mission. 

The plan called for helicopters and cargo planes to rendezvous in the desert outside of the city to launch a rescue raid on the embassy. The crew embarked in April 1980.

The operation was doomed from the start with  many of the helicopters arriving in the Iranian desert damaged. 

Without enough room for all the hostages, the mission was scrapped, but as the crews began to evacuate, a collision between two aircraft created an explosion and fire that claimed the lives of eight, including Johnson. 

“He was just a poor country boy doing his job,” Thompson said. “And he got caught in a bad situation.” 

Also killed in the tragic accident was Capt. Lynn McIntosh, whose parents were Dublin residents. The Oconee River bridge connecting Country Club Road and Buckeye Road was named in honor of Johnson. 

The moving of the Dewey Johnson memorial is just the latest in the closing saga of the Dublin-Laurens Museum. 

With membership dwindling in the local historical society, the body that operated the museum, and local funding stopped, the museum closed and the city took ownership of the building at 702 Bellevue Ave. 

Thompson has since worked to return the museum’s collection to the families that donated or find permanent homes for the items. 

“I’m still sad, kind of upset,” Thompson said. “But there’s not much I can do. But as my dad always said, ‘You don’t have to be a politician to help people.’”