Dear Editor,

When my father, Douglas E. Lowery, was a boy growing up in Clanton, he accidentally stuck a knife in his eye. There was a doctor there in Clanton who saved his eye.

In doing so, my father was able to join the Navy in 1939, and he retired in 1969 as an E9 Master Chief.

That doctor was in the Navy Reserve Medical Corp. His name was Cmdr. Samuel Johnson of Chilton County.

He was serving his reserve duty in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. He was at his battle station in the forward sick bay aboard the USS Arizona, where the bomb hit and caused the explosion that sank the ship.

I honor Cmdr. Johnson and his family. I lost my father in July of 2008.

William P. Lowery, Pearland, Texas