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Rich and Mary Ann Johnson —
Filling far-off hearts and minds through distance learning and launching an economic future on aviation history.
Rich and Mary Ann Johnson have spent their careers taking information distanced by space and time and making it accessible to students and readers in the here and now.
Rich and Mary Ann Johnson have spent their careers taking information distanced by space and time and making it accessible to students and readers in the here and now. Rich helped pioneer distance learning across the media of print, telephone, TV and videotape. Mary Ann worked behind the scenes to research and promote the Dayton area’s unique aviation heritage that started with the Wright brothers’ invention of the airplane.
The Johnsons met at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Rich studied geology and Mary Ann sociology. They married during WWII at Cocoa, Florida where Rich served as a meteorologist at the Banana River Naval Air Station. As part of the Weather Service staff, he manned an isolated post on the east coast of Florida through several hurricanes, with only a jeep for retreat. Later in the Pacific Ocean he sailed aboard the USS PCE 886, a floating weather station at 10 degrees north, 130 degrees east, due east of the Philippines.
Postwar, Mary Ann ran their home while Rich worked for the Farm Bureau Insurance companies (today’s Nationwide Insurance) in Columbus, Ohio. There he discovered a knack for training others. “The day I started teaching, I stopped working.”
Often he’d drive off at the crack of dawn across state lines in a VW loaded with teaching material he’d helped develop. Over his career, Rich lectured at 20 universities, to all the US armed services and over 100 American industries. A favorite sculpture at home shows a weary but satisfied traveler.
Market efficiencies and new technologies created new possibilities for education. Distance learning dates to at least the early 1700s and grew alongside postal delivery. Charles Wedemeyer pioneered modern American distance learning in the 1930s, broadcasting lesson on the radio. By the 1960s the field grew as teaching spread to TV, audiotapes and videocassettes.
A simple early example caught Rich’s imagination. Across Australia’s thinly populated rural sheep ranches, bicycle-powered radios allowed children to interact with teachers hundreds of miles distant. Soon Johnson was doing considerably better. By mailing slides ahead, he could give illustrated talks over the phone, referring to a duplicate set of slides kept behind. It was like giving a PowerPoint talk remotely.
A “temporary” assignment in Dayton stretched out to 34 years at the Air Force Institute of Technology, or AFIT. There, Professor Johnson taught General Management courses, first in its Logistics School under a contract the Ohio State University had with the Air Force, and later in the Civil Engineering School as a civil service employee. With people to train around the globe, the Air Force sought more efficient means of teaching worldwide while minimizing travel. Rich became a prime mover in the field.
When the idea of videotaping lectures was first proposed many instructors balked, fearing their expertise would become unnecessary. Johnson was more confident and recorded numerous tapes. Anyone eligible could then request a tape, and when finished they simply mailed it back. Netflix has built their recent DVD business along similar lines.
Rich still managed to lecture elsewhere. He taught throughout US, Europe, Canada, the Near East and in the Pacific Rim, to audiences spanning the Chrysler Corporation to the Turkish General Staff. His many honors include being named a Fellow in the Society of American Military Engineers, and winning the Air Force’s Civil Engineering Minton Award for his writing. He rose to the professorial rank equivalent of Major General. Upon his 1992 retirement a Wright Brothers Maple tree (developed by Dayton’s Siebenthaler Company) was planted in his honor behind the Wright Cycle Company (described below) with a plaque noting, “The Air Force’s Engineers owe him a great deal.” He continued to speak, primarily on natural history and local history.
Distance learning continues to be practiced alone or with other teaching methods. The field has spread over time to computers and the Internet. Today 96% of large universities offer online courses.
More important than any temporary technology for delivering instruction, Johnson over his career made it a study to master the most effective means of teaching itself. As he notes in the video clip, the best results come from engaging students actively so they’re “coming at you.” Like a judo black belt, the best teachers turn the student’s energy upon itself; the student becomes their own teacher. Johnson says, “lectures fill notebooks, dialog fills minds and real-world experience under a good mentor fills hearts. Notebooks are nice; minds and hearts are essential.”
After raising their four children Mary Ann Johnson returned for a master’s in economics at nearby Wright State University. While there she won honorable mention in a national student essay contest. After graduation, she was employed as an economic planner for the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission, where she wrote a 1977 feasibility study on the nearby Village of Riverside, and an Overall Economic Development Plan for the Miami Valley Region to qualify it for federal economic development assistance.Her work paid off when in 1980 the Commission secured two such federal grants. The money helped support a regional economic development conference at the University of Dayton. Attendees identified Dayton’s aviation heritage as a key way to market the region, through a trail of historic sites. For most conferences that might be it. But a group of those individuals formed the nonprofit Aviation Trail, Inc., with the goals to find and preserve such historic sites, raise awareness and stimulate economic growth. Mary Ann became one of those founding members of Aviation Trail, and has served as a trustee and secretary since 1981.
So began her ever-widening involvement to research and promote significant sites in Dayton’s aviation heritage.
The first pieces of the puzzle came from a model airplane kit owned by one of Mary Ann's sons. The kit had included a paperback copy of Fred C. Kelly's authorized biography of the Wrights. Mary Ann found potential treasure at the back of the book—street addresses in the West Side Dayton neighborhood where Wilbur and Orville Wright had lived, worked and invented the airplane in 1903. By 1937 Henry Ford had bought and moved the Wright home and fifth bike shop to Greenfield Village, his historical park outside Detroit. But did any other sites still exist?
They did indeed. Kelley’s list of addresses revealed two buildings still standing, separated only by a vacant lot. One was the earliest Wright bicycle shop at 22 South Williams Street, where they first began their search for the secrets of powered flight. The other was the Hoover Block building at West Third and South Williams Streets, where the Wrights once ran a print shop. And no one seemed to be doing anything about the sites, or the run-down neighborhood.
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Mary Ann Johnson 1996 Oral History Interview with National Park Service Historian Ann Deines
External Resources:
Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT)
McCook Field 1917-1927: The Force Behind America’s Golden Age of Flight..
A Field Guide to Flight: On the Aviation Trail in Dayton, Ohio. By Mary Ann Johnson
Orville Wright. Valley of the Giants. By Mary Ann Johnson
Village of Riverside central business district feasibility study / prepared by Mary Ann Johnson, economic specialist ... [et al.]. 1977, Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission, 61 p. : ill. ; 28 cm. Dayton Metro Library, Dayton Local History Room
1995 video “On the Aviation Trail in Dayton, Ohio”
written & directed by Mary Ann Johnson, Produced by John Zampatti
Johnson named 2008 Trailblazer recipient. Oakwood Register
Local historian to receive Aviation Trail award. Dayton Daily News
Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park
Fred C. Kelly's authorized biography The Wright Brothers
Wright Dunbar Business District
The Rise of Military Aviation R&D in Dayton. Daytonology
Mr. Alf Traeger transmitting by a pedal-powered wireless. Courtesy of National Library of Australia
The Pedal Radio of the Great Outback. By Richard Begbie. Antique Radio Classified
Rich Johnson discussed what it means to teach, the importance of involving students, and his thoughts on long-distance learning. Credits >>