Cliff Buchan
News Editor

Jesse Johnson may be looking at desert sand these days, but his mind most certainly has not forgotten the glimmering water of Leech Lake and the 42-inch muskie that came to his boat.

For Johnson, 27, a 1998 Forest Lake High School graduate, an August fishing trip to Walker and Leech Lake was the perfect send off for a soldier headed for duty in Iraq.

“It was something he always wanted to do,” said his mother, Faye Johnson, of the trip to Leech and a bid for a giant muskie which he had never caught before.

The dream was realized in early August when Capt. Jesse Johnson hooked a 42-inch monster that gave him the sporting rush of his lifetime. The fish was landed, measured, photographed and released back to the waters of Leech Lakes.

Johnson was accompanied on the fishing trip by his father, Kenneth C. Johnson. Jim Flesch was the guide who found the perfect spot.

The trio was fishing near Pelican Island when the big fish hit.

It was the perfect ending for the Johnson family fishing trip.

By late in August, Capt. Johnson had deployed to Iraq. He is a quartermaster serving with the 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One, stationed in the Tikrit area of Iraq where he will be stationed for 15 months.

The deployment is Johnson’s second to the region. He has been in the Army for nearly 10 years after an early enlistment in the National Guard while still in high school.

He attended St. Cloud State University and enrolled in the Reserve Officer Training Corps. He left the program as a lieutenant and has since been promoted to captain. He has a degree in economics.

In 2004 while stationed in Germany, Johnson served a four-month deployment in Baghdad with the 1st Armored Division.

Military family

Johnson’s military service goes hand in hand with the Johnson family tradition.

His father is a retired Army colonel who spent more than 30 years in the service of his country.

Kenneth C. Johnson spent three years in the Marines and served in Vietnam from 1967-1968.

After his active duty stint in the Marines, the elder Johnson joined the Minnesota National Guard where he served from 1974-2001. He spent the final 17 years of service from 1984 to 2001 with the Guard on full-time active duty status, retiring as a colonel.

Jana Johnson Zwilling, a 1995 Forest Lake graduate and Jesse Johnson’s sister, served on active duty in the Air Force from 2000 to 2007, rising to the rank of captain. She graduated from St. Scholastica in Duluth in 2000 with a degree in nursing and also completed her Air Force ROTC program at the University of Minnesota-Duluth at the same time.

After leaving the Air Force earlier this year, she has enrolled in the nurse practitioner program at the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks.

Her husband, Capt. Paul Zwilling, is stationed at the Grand Forks Air Force Base. He has served one deployment in Afghanistan.

Faye and Ken Johnson have lived in Forest Lake since 1987.

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