Saturday event will honor Johnny Johnson, co-founder of Oceaneering

A celebration of life for John T. “Johnny” Johnson, a former Morgan City Council member, entrepreneur and pioneer in the local diving industry, will be at 10 a.m. Saturday at Municipal Auditorium.
Johnson died June 27 in his native Tennessee. He was 86.
He came to Morgan City to become a commercial diver. In 1964, he partnered with fellow University of Tennessee alumnus Mike Hughes to start their own diving company, World Wide Divers.
World Wide merged with Can Dive and Cal Dive in 1969 to become Oceaneering International.
“Johnson and Oceaneering would search for innovative, safer solutions to allow the oil and gas industry to push into deeper water depths,” the Oceaneering website said.
Johnson worked for his company as a diver and as senior vice president.
A notable acquisition by Oceaneering was Divcon in 1971. Johnson described the acquisition of Divcon, which was five times as large as Oceaneeering, as a “classic case of the minnow swallowing the whale.”
When remotely operated vehicles began to emerge, in the 1970s, Johnson wrote in a memo that would become famous saying, “This is an important development that we need to keep an eye on.”
The company said Oceaneering would become one of the largest owners and operators of remotely operated vehicles in the world.
Oceaneering’s diving and ROV expertise was employed in several high-profile recovery projects, including the wrecks of the Titanic, the Lusitania and the Liberty Bell 7 space capsule.
Johnson received the John E. Galletti Jr. Memorial Award which was presented by the Association of Diving Contractors in recognition of significant achievement in the field of commercial diving.
In 2005, the year after he retired from Oceaneering, Johnson was inducted into the American Diving Contractors’ Commercial Diving Hall Of Fame.
In addition to his service as a city councilman in Morgan City, Johnson was named Morgan City Rotarian of the Year in 2009 and was also named a Paul Harris Fellow.
He also served as the president of the Morgan City Petroleum Club, was a member of the Tune Weavers in Morgan City, and was chairman of United Way for South Louisiana.
He served on the boards of The Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center, The Boys and Girls Club of Knoxville, and the University of Tennessee School of Music.