Prairie Ramblings

Remembering “John Deere Johnny”

By Tracy Sayler

John Ogonowski was a big fan of John Deere equipment.  His collection of six antique tractors was green, and so too was most of the equipment he used on his farm about 30 miles north of Boston, Mass. He liked green equipment so much that family members jokingly called the driveway leading up to John’s house “John Deere Way.” He even had a nickname that reflected his passion for this line of farm equipment — “John Deere Johnny.”

John Deere Johnny also loved flying. He served in the U.S. Air Force and joined American Airlines in 1979 as a pilot. John lost his life tragically at age 50 on September 11, 2001, when the Boeing 767 he was piloting, American Flight 11, was the first of four planes to be hijacked by terrorists. The plane was headed for Los Angeles from Boston’s Logan Airport, when it crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center with 92 people on board.  John was married with three daughters.

John’s younger brother, Lt. Colonel Jim Ogonowski, is a navigator with the Air National Guard.  Both John and Jim balanced their jobs in the air with their love for working the land. They grew up on a farm near Dracut, Mass, where their family raised dairy replacement heifers and hay. The farming bug stuck with the Ogonowski boys as they grew up. Brother Joe is a plastics engineer in Michigan who grows and sells pumpkins on the side.  Jim is a commercial producer of chrysanthemums.  John grew hay for the New England horse market, field corn cut and sold for autumn decoration, and several fruit crops.

Farms are much smaller in the New England region compared to the Midwest, and for good reason: The cost of farmland runs from $20,000 to as high as $150,000 an acre. “You can’t grow any crops to pay the interest on a $30,000-per acre note,” says Jim. Thus, when John bought his 150-acre farm years ago, he participated in a joint land purchasing program offered by the commonwealth of Massachusetts.  Through the restricted deed program, John owns the agricultural value of the land and farming rights to it, while the state owns the commercial value of the land with the intention of preserving it so that it never becomes commercially developed. John had a strong interest in protecting land from urban development.  He was a founding member of the Dracut Land Trust, and worked to maintain the area’s farming culture. 

“John’s farm will be preserved as open space forever,” says Jim. That is, when the Ogonowski family decides to no longer farm it.  “Right now, me and several cousins and my uncle will farm it. We’re going to harvest the rest of John’s crops and this winter, formulate a plan for next year.  But our immediate intention is to continue farming the land.”

A close-knit family, most of the Ogonowskis still live in the Dracut area. It was a ritual for John to honk his car horn while driving past his uncle’s place on the way to the airport (which he did early in the morning on September 11). The Ogonowski family had a friendly competition when they would attend farm shows: to see who could get the most free farm caps.

Jim recalls one farm show in upstate New York, where free caps were scarce.  “It’s not like the old days when you could come away with a bunch of them. They’re a bit harder to get now.  None of us were coming away with any hats. But my brother, he was determined to win,” says Jim, with a strong “Bawstun” brogue. “He started talking to a John Deere fella and asked, ‘You have any hats?’ The guy says no, and then John says, ‘well, you’re wearing one.’ And within five minutes, he talked the hat off the guy’s head.  And the rest of us are standing there, saying ‘how can we compete against this, when he’s taking the hat right off the guy’s head?’”

Jim says losing John so suddenly and senselessly has sparked myriad emotions within the Ogonowski family, including shock and denial.  “Every time I watch the news and see them go through the rubble in New York City, I still think, you know, there’s going to be a miracle and one guy’s going to come out of there alive, and it’s going to be my brother. I know that’s unrealistic, but I still have those moments where I say to myself, ‘C’mon John! We know you’re gonna come out of there!’”

John’s farm shop is the most difficult place for Jim to go now.  “Because I’ve never been in there without him being in there. When I go in…he should be there. It’s a tough door for me to open.”

Jim says John excelled at whatever he did, and was a generous man. Many Cambodians fled their war-torn country to settle in the New England area.  John provided labor, equipment, and about 10 acres of his land to some Cambodian refugees so they could grow vegetables native to their country. 

“I never talked to my brother about finances, because that was his personal business.  But from what I understand, he rarely, if ever, collected rent from them.  He helped them work the land, fertilize it, and set up drip irrigation. He was busy enough already, but that was just the kind of guy he was,” says Jim. “It’s ironic that John died at the hands of terrorists, when he was helping others who were victims of terrorism in their own land.”