My walk today was dedicated in honor of :
Air Force Veteran SSGT Johnny Cash, Age 71 of Hendersonville, TN.
Died Sep. 12, 2003
He enlisted in the United States Air Force on July 7, 1950. After basic training at Lakeland Air Force Base and technical training at Brooks Air Force Base, both in San Antonio, TX, Cash was assigned to the 12th Radio Squadron Mobile of the US. Air Force Security Service at Landsberg, West Germany.
He became a Morese Code operator intercepting Soviet Army transmissions. He showed amazing skills at cracking Morse Code so he was put in a leading seat at the Landsberg post to monitor in on Soviet communications. It was an important time in Johnny Cash’s life during this time period as he was inspired to write the iconic lyrics for Folsom Prison Blues after seeing the film “Inside The Walls of Folsom Prison. Also, while stationed in Landsberg he created his first band, named “The Lansberg Barbarians”
However, the highlight during the three years he served the Air Force, surely wasn’t something related to his future music career, and is something that a few people actually know about.On March 5th, 1953, while working on his post, Cash intercepted a very important communique from the Soviets. At the time, Joseph Stalin, Soviet Premier Leader was in a quite poor health condition, and as the first man of the Soviet empire, his health status was very important to the U.S intelligence community.
While transcribing the Soviet Morse Code chatter, Johnny Cash became the first American to hear the news of the death of the Soviet leader. Sgt.Staff Cash immediately reported the important news to his superiors and the rest is history.
Regarding the nature of his job, Cash was obliged to keep this as top secret and couldn’t tell anyone of his achievement until years later. Cash was honorably discharged as a staff sergeant on July 3, 1954, and returned to Texas.
We had an amazing walk this morning. I want to thank Robert for help making this possible by driving me to Nashville. We walked down Music Row. We stopped by Sun Diner and had breakfast then we stopped by Johnny Cash Museum. Got to talk to a homeless veteran. As soon as we started to do our walk we got honks. It was really great. I want to thank everyone who honked and waved in helping us honor this hero.
He will not be forgotten !
