GOLD STAR MEMBERS

Johnson grew up in a tight-knit family with nine siblings and stepsiblings. He and Vernon, who is about a year younger, spent their teenage years at the Carver Terrace complex in Northeast with their grandmother, who doted on Johnson.  "He was super-spoiled. Randy was her pet. Randy went everywhere she went. When she jumped, he jumped."  Johnson worked summer jobs as a lifeguard at the swimming pool at the Barry Farm housing complex in Southeast and played wide receiver on the football team at Spingarn High School, from which he graduated. He wasn't very tall or fast, but he had good hands and remained determined.  "He was a tough-nosed little guy. He had the heart of a 7-footer,"  His brother was a "math whiz" who used to do homework for his little brother.

Last year, Johnson was training troops in Washington state when a desire to be with his unit sent him back to his cavalry regiment in Vilseck, Germany, and then to Iraq.  "I don't understand why he was back over there,"  "He got that gung-ho attitude about his fellow soldiers, and he wanted to be with them."  The military life made his son happy and made the family proud of the man he had become. The Army offered him travels around the world and led him to marry his German wife, Claudia.  The couple have two boys, Devin, 5, and Aaron, 1, who has not met his family in the United States.