This 108-year-old World War II veteran is still teeing it up

RIVERSIDE, Iowa — A crowd of about 40 had gathered on the driving range of Blue Top Ridge Golf Course. They were all waiting for a single golfer to arrive.

Quiet murmuring could be heard when shortly after 1:15 p.m., the cart carrying him pulled up.

Under a sunny September sky, the crowd moved forward, eager to shake his hand and pose for photos with him before he moved on to the driving range for a quick warmup.

No, it wasn’t Tiger Woods or some other luminary of the game. It was Donald Johnson.

Donald Johnson, the retired Cedar Rapids restaurant owner.

Donald Johnson, the World War II veteran.

Donald Johnson, who at age 108 was once again ready to tee it up at the National Disabled Veterans Golf Clinic.

That Donald Johnson.

People could hardly wait. His fan base, after all, had been waiting a year for this moment.

Last year was Johnson’s first at the event, and to say he made an impression would be an understatement. At the tender age of 107, he did no less than get featured on ESPN SportsCenter’s Top 10 Plays of the Day when he holed out a 15-foot putt.

Fitted with a special cart that supports him while he swings from a semi-seated position, Johnson still uses his own clubs. He was asked which one he wanted to start with on the driving range.

“3-iron,” Johnson replied, drawing some whispers from experienced golfers in the gallery, knowing that the 3 can be one of the more difficult clubs in the bag.

After a couple of clunkers, Johnson launched one in the air and down the range.

Then he did it again.

“I don’t think I’ve lost it yet,” said Johnson, born before the U.S. entered World War I.

After the warmup, he moved on to the course, joining a group on the ninth green. His first test wasn’t an easy one: a slippery, 25-foot downhill putt with a slight break to the left.

After lining it up, he confidently stroked the ball toward the hole. It looked like it would end up short, but he had played it perfectly. It caught the slope, gained a little speed, then curled a bit to the left to settle about a foot from the hole — a very good outcome by anyone on a challenging putt.

‘Can’t we play one more hole?’

Johnson would end up playing a couple of more holes as a Bluetooth speaker belted out his favorite singer, Frank Sinatra, before calling it a day.

Next to his family, golf has been a love of Johnson’s life. The golf bug bit him in the 1950s after his service in the Navy, when he owned Baranchanu’s Steakhouse in Cedar Rapids from 1947 to 1969.

“On slow days at the restaurant, he would sneak out to golf in the afternoon,” said daughter Linnea Johnson-Scott, the youngest of his four children, before Johnson moved to the driving range.

“Well, once in a while,” Johnson said.

“He would call my mom and say he was going out golfing, and she would sometimes say, ‘It’s pouring outside,’ and Dad would say, ‘The golf course doesn’t get wet enough’” not to play, Johnson-Scott said.

Nick Beelner, director of the National Disabled Veterans Golf Clinic, got a front-row seat to Johnson’s devotion to the game last year when he tagged along during play.

When isolated storm cells popped up, Beelner said he felt it was his duty to get Johnson off the course for the sake of safety.

“And he says, ‘Can’t we play one more hole?’ I remember thinking, ‘He’s 107 and a World War II vet. Who am I to say he can’t?’” Beelner said.

Before golfing at the Sept. 9 event, Johnson recalled his days in the U.S. Navy.

“We patrolled off Chesapeake Bay, watching for submarines or anything that could sink our shipping,” he said.

In addition to looking for enemy subs, Johnson’s military role included guiding fleet and cargo ships through minefields and conducting ship inspections, according to Johnson-Scott.

Johnson said he completed his military career as a lieutenant aboard the USS Iowa after it had returned to Seattle from Tokyo following the war in 1945. The ship was being prepared for long occupation duty in Japan when he learned he had enough hours to muster out shortly before Christmas 1945.

Both he and his wife, Phyllis, to whom he was married for 63 years until her death in 2004, were teachers in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, when the opportunity came up to get into the restaurant business in Cedar Rapids, an option that looked attractive compared to teaching’s low pay.

In 1969, an urban renewal project claimed the restaurant, and Johnson went on to manage the Cedar Room at Armstrong’s, also in Cedar Rapids, as well as five other operations in the Midwest owned by the Price Candy Co. After he retired in 1991, he volunteered with SCORE, the Service Corps of Retired Executives, mentoring small business owners.

At 108, he’s among the rarest of the rare. Now, Johnson is part of a group that is as exclusive as the costliest of country clubs. U.S. Census figures show that just 0.003 percent of the population is at least 105, and the numbers shrink dramatically with every passing year beyond that. A gerontology wiki lists him as one of the 10 oldest U.S. World War II veterans.

How many of either group can still swing a golf club? Or even want to?

Johnson, who has been a resident of the Meth-Wick retirement community in Cedar Rapids since 1997, has never lost his passion for golf.

“He asked several times over the last year if he got invited back,” Johnson-Scott said of her father’s desire to tee it up again.

Johnson-Scott said her Dad yearned to participate in the clinic “to golf one more time, because he misses it so much,” adding that the National Disabled Veterans Golf Clinic “has enabled him to do so twice.”