Strong cherishes his grandfather’s Clemson Ring
The Clemson Ring that Paul Strong ’92 wears does not have his graduation year on it. Instead, it bears the number 25 — or it once did. Now, only the gold 2 is visible on the ring’s face, along with traces of a border and a tree with fading branches.
That is because Paul is not the ring’s original owner. It first belonged to his maternal grandfather, Charles Stanley Johnson 1925. When Paul graduated from Clemson University, his mother, Elizabeth Strong, gifted him the ring.
“It meant everything to me because it gave me a little bit of purpose,” Paul said. “Nobody wore it after he died … and she had shared with me that, when I finished, I would earn that ring.”
Johnson arrived at Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina from Jacksonville, Florida, in 1921, joining a class of 338 freshmen. The 1925 Taps yearbook, which he edited, notes that he swam, ran track, played basketball and held leadership offices. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and attained the rank of first lieutenant.
Although Johnson died when Paul was very young, he remembers watching Clemson Football with him and hearing stories about his college days. The family still has one of Johnson’s diaries, which describes the taxing military drills on Bowman Field, the toughness of his professors, and walking 4 miles along train tracks with friends to visit nearby Pendleton, South Carolina.
With these formative connections, attending Clemson was always part of Paul’s plan.
“It really, for me, worked out to be of great assistance in my lifetime because everybody knows Clemson now,” said Paul, who began his career as a financial advisor in 1995 in the World Trade Center and now lives in Ormond Beach, Florida.
After graduation, Johnson worked on a survey crew for Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company, guiding phone and cable lines over 300 miles from Gainesville, Florida, to the Everglades. Each summer, he attended Army Reserve training near Tybee Island, Georgia. In 1940, at age 38, Johnson was called into active duty by the U.S. Army.
“I wouldn’t want to drop everything and go into active military, but he was called into service, and he went,” Paul said. “He felt that duty, and that came from Clemson. Came from training there.”
A severe leg injury prevented Johnson from deploying overseas, and he was honorably discharged at the end of World War II. He later worked in Birmingham, Alabama, as a sales representative for a fly ash arrestor company before retiring to Florida.
Fittingly, the eagle on one side of Johnson’s Clemson Ring remains prominent a century later.
“It signifies our country and service,” Paul said. “He dedicated his life to service, and that was ingrained through the old war college days.”
