Contributed commentary on Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Bubba Johnson by Joey Dallas:
Ask the people who worked beside David “Bubba” Johnson what they remember, and before they get to a single call, they mention the smile. For more than three decades of public service, it went everywhere he did, through the midnight shifts and the hard calls that quietly wear a person down. He did all of it, the people who knew him say, “with a smile on his face.” More than a decade after he perished, that smile is still the first thing they reach for.
Bubba was Clarksville through and through. Born in Montgomery County in 1961, he spent his whole life within a few miles of where he grew up, and he spent most of it in service to the people around him. Before the badge there was the ambulance: five years with the Montgomery County Emergency Medical Service, learning early that the job was really about showing up for strangers on the worst day of their lives. Eleven years with the Clarksville Police Department followed, then 16 with the Sheriff’s Office: more than three decades, all told, spent answering when someone called…