Longtime Severna Park Resident Bud Johnson Passes Away

A resident of Severna Park, Maryland, for over 40 years, Maurice “Bud” Philborn Johnson was born in Jamestown, New York, on December 25, 1922. He died peacefully at home on April 8, 2020.

Known his entire life as Bud, Johnson graduated from Jamestown High School in 1941. He served in the Army Air Corps from 1942 to 1946, repairing secret radar systems in the southwest Pacific islands of New Guinea, Borneo, Morotai and finishing in the Philippines.

After World War II, he studied electronic engineering at Valparaiso Tech in Indiana. He moved to Baltimore in 1948 in the infancy of commercial television as part of the crew that installed Channel 13 – then known as WAAM TV, now WJZ. He worked at Channel 13 from 1948 until 1956.

Johnson then joined Westinghouse Defense Center at BWI as a design engineer creating communications and radar systems for nearly 30 years. In 1965, he obtained a second bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins University. He also was a licensed member of the Professional Engineering Society of Maryland from 1967 until well after his retirement from Westinghouse.

He retired in April 1985 and continued to do electronic design consulting including early drones for the military. He wrote a chapter of a microwave book published by QST and wrote many magazine articles for electronic hobbyists. A lifelong interest in photography and video led to his authoring numerous magazine articles in these fields.

His interests also included extensive travel, which he documented on video. He led several custom group trips to Europe after retiring. He also taught continuing education courses on travel and photography at Anne Arundel Community College. A lifelong learner, he expanded his interests by studying art, symphonic music and theater at Anne Arundel Community College.

He also joined his wife in early 1997, serving as a photographer in their freelance team coverage of Anne Arundel County performing arts monthly in the Severna Park Voice and weekly in the Baltimore Sun – Arundel section which he continued until July 2015 when a fall resulting in a broken hip ended his photo work four years before his wife’s 2017 retirement from full-time freelance arts writing.

Bud Johnson is survived by his wife of 64 years, Mary Powell Johnson, and their daughter, Joy Johnson-Gomez, son-in-law Michael Gomez and their only grand-daughter, Marie Fredrikis.