Service is a highly familiar concept for Vietnam veteran Wayman Johnson, whether halfway around the world or just around the corner.
The hospital volunteer, Knights of Columbus member and longtime Savannah River Site employee is known through a variety of roles around Aiken and Augusta, and Orangeburg is also part of the picture, as he is a member of the South Carolina State University ROTC Hall of Fame.
His university degree was in “physical chemistry, which also covered nuclear chemistry,” he recalled.
“He’s just a fine gentleman – reliable, honest and trustworthy,” said Joan Lacombe, one of Johnson’s fellow parishioners at St. Gerard Catholic Church. “Anything you would want in a gentleman, he has it.”
Kelli Moore, a recreation therapist with Charlie Norwood Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, in Augusta, made similar comments. “He has been the best volunteer. Any time we need anything, he’s right there, and I know that I can count on him for whatever our needs may be. One time it was a popcorn machine,” she recalled.
Johnson has been on board at Augusta’s “uptown” VA facility since November 2006. Pandemic-related restrictions have reduced activity options, so Johnson and his peers “have been consistently providing snacks, and whatever they can do, they do,” Moore said.
Johnson and his wife, an Edgefield County native, met in college and wound up having an employer in common years later, as both worked at the massive nuclear reservation for decades.
Chester is another community with a claim to the Army vet. He was born there, and spent most of his childhood in Orangeburg, and Aiken has been his base of operations since 1975, when he launched into a 33-year career at the Savannah River Plant, as the nuclear reservation was known at the time.
“I had generally the same kind of title, but different positions,” he recalled. “I started off at the K Reactor as a supervisor … and I was told I was the first African American to be a certified supervisor of a reactor – K Reactor.”
That line of work called on his Army background, he noted. “When I went to the interview, I let them know I had a little bit of radiation safety. I was a chemical officer part of my time in the military, and I was nuclear weapons-qualified, so we had a whole lot of training on the basic nuclear chemistry subject, and then the … weapons.”
He noted that his Army time also included service in what was then known as the North American Air Defense Command – NORAD. “I had responsibility for … Oklahoma and north Texas, and whenever a bomber with nuclear weapons flew over, we’d get an alert and had a team in case they had an accident, to go survey the area, or mark out where the radiation may be.”
By that point, he had reached the Army rank of captain, with leadership experience to his credit, and would go on to retire as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves.
The military years included two tours in Vietnam, with stops – of extremely varying length – along the way in such locales as Malaysia, Japan, the Philippines and Alaska.
“To put it in layman’s terms, I was a scout, and to put it in the technical military term, I operated the personnel detector,” he said, referring to…
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