After 40 years, O.C. tragedy still a mystery

OCEAN CITY, N.J. - As fire engines wailed and smoke drifted across the boardwalk toward the sea, the Johnson family clung to a desperate hope.

They wanted to believe that Jimmy Johnson, a daring 15-year-old with two recently healed broken wrists, had awakened early, grabbed his surfboard and paddled into the rolling swells one last time before school started.

If that were true, the mysterious early-morning fire that destroyed Johnson's Ice Cream and Candy Shop, an institution on the boardwalk since 1930, would have consumed only a building that could have been rebuilt.

But as it turned out, the blaze took the building, the business and Jimmy Johnson. It was 40 years ago Wednesday - Sept. 2, 1969, the morning after Labor Day - and the embers from the still-unsolved tragedy still burn in the hearts of those who escaped.

"I wanted to believe so badly that he wasn't in there," his father, Ed, now 83, told the Daily News the other day. "That wasn't the case."

Four plaques dedicated to the Johnson family and their business are affixed to benches on the Ocean City boardwalk near Brighton Place, not far from where the "twinkling yellow lights" of Johnson's Ice Cream beckoned tourists to the "home of a thousand delights," as the parlor's advertising slogan said.

At the Shore, the bond between some businesses and their customers is sealed by an intangible glue for which marketers pray. For the tourists who loved the shop, having a Johnson's ice cream in Ocean City, with a sourball at the bottom of every cone to plug the drips, was a tradition that opened or closed the curtains to their summer vacation for almost 40 years.

Just imagine living there, said Ann Richardson, Ed's only other child.

"Oh, I felt like I was a princess in my own magical castle," said Richardson, now 50.

For most Shore business owners and tourists, summer is over on Labor Day, but Tom Oves was up before 7 a.m. the next morning, removing the tarps from his stable of rental bikes.

He was one of the first to see the fire in the Johnsons' ice-cream parlor and their connected residence.

"I saw smoke coming up from the roof of the shop, so I ran and called the fire department," said Oves, 75, a restaurant owner in Ocean City. "I ran over to the house and started shouting, 'Ed, get up, there's a fire!' "

Richardson said she can recall her father tearing the screen off the bedroom window, rescuing her and a friend who was staying over.

Witnesses saw 16-year-old Tom Johnson, a cousin, standing in front of a window with a blanket wrapped around him as smoke filled the room behind him. He eventually got out.

But no one could recall seeing Jimmy, and it's believed that he simply never woke up and died of smoke inhalation.

"I remember Ed yelling, 'My son is still in there,' " said Ken Cooper, president of the Ocean City Historical Museum and a lifelong friend of the Johnsons. "For me, being a kid, the day was horrifying. I had never lost someone before."

And Ocean City had lost a landmark, said historian Fred Miller.

"I remember the whole city was in shock," he said.

Johnson and his daughter say the fire that claimed Jimmy's life was deemed an arson and was never solved.

"He wasn't killed, he was murdered," Johnson said.

The summer of 1969 was a turbulent time in the U.S. - and Ocean City, which calls itself "America's Greatest Family Resort," was not immune. Newspaper accounts from the era detail police problems with partying teens and "hippies" in the town.

Other arsons hit Ocean City that summer, too. A Daily News article in August 1969 reported that three teenagers from "good families" had been arrested after igniting a $50,000 blaze in a "psychedelic shop" on the boardwalk.

A little more than three weeks after the fire at Johnson's, a second blaze destroyed what remained of the shop. One news account reported that Ira Johnson, Ed's father, said he had heard an explosion while working on machinery at the store.

Interviewed at the time, Fire Chief Ferdinand Taccarino said the second fire had "spread too quickly to be regarded as accidental" and noted that the cause of the first fire was still undetermined.

Taccarino has since died. Several former and current Ocean City firefighters declined to comment for this article, and others did not return phone calls and e-mails seeking comment.

Richardson said she has considered numerous suspects: Vietnam protesters, disgruntled employees - even the notorious convicted cop-killer Robert "Mudman" Simon, who she said was in Ocean City that summer and had admitted in prison that he had killed a fourth, unidentified, person in his lifetime. Simon was fatally beaten by fellow death-row inmate Ambrose Harris in 1999.

"There's probably somebody out there who knows something," Richardson said.

Ed Johnson said he no longer seeks justice, at least not on earth. The notion of dragging his grandchildren through a trial and "media circus" just isn't worth it, he said.

"It's been too many years," he said. "At the time, if I had known, I would have ripped the person's throat out. They've lived with this guilt for a long time, though."

Johnson and his father helped build the ice-cream shop with their own hands, he said, and knew that with more hard work they could resurrect the family business and bring a few more smiles back to the boardwalk.

But for Elizabeth Johnson, Ed's wife, a resurrected ice-cream shop would have been a constant reminder that their son wasn't coming back.

"My dad and I were going over plans and going to rebuild. I looked over to my wife, and looked into her eyes and I knew," Johnson said, wiping his own eyes with a finger. "I said, 'Dad, I can't do it.' My wife never shed a tear. She kept it all inside."

Johnson said he made a vow to not let the fire destroy his family. He went on to become a teacher, trying to help his young daughter and distraught wife - who has since died - cope with the loss.

"I would not let this thing destroy us," he said.

The key, Johnson said, is to keep the happy memories vivid and alive.

And so, he can still smell the rich chocolate and the ice cream, swirling together in the warm, salty air. He can hear the customers' laughter, the clambering feet on the summer boardwalk and the crashing waves below.

Even after 40 years, he can still see his wife, his daughter and his restless teenage son, all living and working together in their magical castle at the Shore.