Jay Johnson

Jay packed many lives into one lifetime, but, first and foremost, Jay thought of himself as a pilot. He has now made his final flight to his heavenly home.

He grew up in Western Springs, Illinois and at 16 years-old, on October 10, 1943, he got his pilot’s license in a Piper J-3 Cub. But during his senior year, an explosion occurred when he and some high school friends were building a rocket out of steel pipe, gun powder and blasting caps. His right eye was destroyed and his left eye was seriously damaged with nine pieces of shrapnel. He was blind. The pastor of Jay’s little church in Western Springs, Illinois was Billy Graham, and Jay’s father called Billy to come pray over Jay. Billy Graham and George Beverly Shea came and prayed over Jay at the Chicago Presbyterian Hospital, and anointed him with olive oil that Billy had gotten from the hospital kitchen. The doctors gave Jay no hope of ever seeing again, much less ever flying again, but Billy Graham did.

After graduating from the Glendale Aeronautics College, Jay first worked for the Grand Central Aircraft Company in Glendale, CA. He then went to Edwards Air Force Base, working in its experimental aircraft test flight center, where he met and flew with Chuck Yeager, the first man to fly Mach I.

While attending Hollywood Presbyterian Church, Jay met his future wife, Margie Jean Richardson, and they were in Young Adult classes with Henrietta Mears. Their Sunday School teachers were Bill and Vonette Bright, and because of those relationships, Jay and Margie were able to be a part of Campus Crusade’s beginnings in 1951. Two years earlier, in 1949, they had been able to be a part of the Los Angeles Crusade which made Billy Graham famous.

Reverend Dick Halverson, a future chaplain of the U.S. Senate, performed Jay and Margie’s wedding (actually their second wedding: they had already eloped and gotten married in Las Vegas’ first wedding chapel, the Hitching Post, a few months earlier).

Jay worked as a missile technician at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory with Dr. Frank Goddard and Dr. Wernher von Braun testing missile technology in the supersonic and hypersonic wind tunnel and accomplishing the Explorer I satellite launch on January 31, 1958.

In the late 1950s, Jay invented an entirely new process for creating items out of fiberglass and started his own company, Glas-Craft. Disneyland was being built at that time. Jay met Walt Disney and much of Disneyland was built with his invention and process.

It is, however, the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia that holds the collection of his private papers, because Jay’s invention of a new process for applying fiberglass revolutionized the boat building industry and entirely changed the manner, cost, and time in which boats could be built.

To show the advantages of his new fiberglass process, Jay designed and built a 50’ Catamaran, the Glass Slipper, that he and his son, Scott, sailed to victory in multiple Los Angeles-to-Honolulu sailing yacht races.

Jay’s process also revolutionized many other industries: for example, essentially all tubs, showers, and motorcoaches are now built more efficiently and economically with the process he invented.

With the success of Glas-Craft, Jay and Margie bought a large island in Fiji and built on it the Kaimbu Resort, a quiet and exclusive resort.

During the years Jay lived on Kaimbu, he was credited with saving the lives of 16 people in his private sea plane, a Piaggio Royal Gull Amphibian, which he used in Air Sea Rescues. Jay was also one of the founders of Air Pacific Airlines in Fiji and served on its Board of Directors for 27 years.

Jay and Margie moved to Haywood, Virginia in 1995 where Jay continued to create inventions in his well-equipped shop. He had designed and was building his new “Low Aspect Ratio” Sting Ray plane when his increasing illness suspended that work.

Jay was preceded in death by his father, Oscar Johnson, his mother, Evoh Morgan Johnson, his sister Jeannine Prott, and his two sons, Kenneth Rand Johnson and Jay Scott Johnson. Jay is survived by his loving and devoted wife of sixty years, Margie Jean Johnson; his two grandsons: Michael Jay Johnson, of Haywood, Virginia, and Charles Rand Scott Johnson, of Auckland, New Zealand, and Charles’ mother, Jay’s daughter-in-law, Sally Johnson. Two nieces, Sherry Murphy of Trabuco, California, and Sally Wilde of Capistrano Beach, California, and a nephew, Greg Prott, of Mechanicsville, Maryland, also survive him.

The family and friends viewing time will be at Clore-English Funeral Home on Sunday, September 8 at 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.. The funeral will be at Novum Baptist Church, on Monday, September 9 at 10:00 a.m. and a fellowship meal will follow the service. Pastor Doug Farmer and Pastor Jeff Light will conduct the services.