Air Force Senior Airman Daniel Johnson, 23, of Schiller Park, Ill. was assigned to 30th Civil Engineer Squadron, Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA. He died Oct. 5, 2010, in Kandahar, Afghanistan. SrA Johnson was conducting an explosive ordnance operation when his unit was attacked. He had completed less than a month of a planned six-month deployment when he was killed
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SrA Johnson was born in Ely, MN and moved to Madison, WI when he was 10. There he attended Monona Grove High School, where he was a three-sport athlete excelling in football, swimming, and track (pole vault). SrA Johnson joined the Air Force about a year after graduation. After basic training in San Antonio, Texas, in September 2007 he graduated with honors from the Naval School Explosive Ordnance Disposal at Eglin Air Force Base.

Johnson talked about the dangers of his job in an interview with California television station KSBY. “You work on an IED or something like that, and you know there’s hostile forces around you, you must be crazy to do what you do,” Johnson said. “I never really thought about it. It just seemed like a cool job.”

SrA Johnson is survived by his wife Kristen.