A chance find in a Mississippi pawn shop has turned into a story of persistence and goodwill that started right here in the Mobile area. Mobile attorney Chip Herrington purchased an engraved Navy officer’s sword for $40 at a shop in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, with little more than curiosity about its history.
What Herrington didn’t know at the time was that the sword had been missing for more than four decades. After examining the engravings and doing some digging, he was able to trace the weapon back to its original owner: Roy M. Johnsen, an 85-year-old retired Navy pilot who flew during the Korean War.
Johnsen, who now lives in Pennsylvania, told Herrington the sword had been stolen from him back in 1971. For more than 40 years, it changed hands without any indication of where it came from or who it belonged to, until it landed on a pawn shop shelf across the bay from Mobile.
Herrington’s search for the sword’s rightful owner eventually caught the attention of a reporter with The Washington Post, who interviewed the Mobile attorney by phone as the story spread well beyond the Gulf Coast. What began as a local curiosity turned into a nationally shared example of quiet generosity and old-fashioned detective work.
Rather than simply mailing the sword back, Herrington said he hopes to arrange for Johnsen to travel to Mobile so the two can meet and the sword can be returned to him in person. For a piece of military history that spent over 40 years separated from its owner, a face-to-face homecoming felt like the right way to close the story.
The tale is a reminder of how small, personal gestures in a place like Mobile can carry weight far beyond the city limits, and of how much history can be tied up in a single object passed from hand to hand for decades. Local historians note that engraved military swords like this one often serve as treasured family heirlooms, making Herrington’s effort to track down its rightful owner especially meaningful.
For Johnsen, a decorated veteran of a war often overshadowed by others in American memory, the return of a personal keepsake lost since the early 1970s offers a small but powerful sense of closure, thanks to one Mobile attorney’s willingness to chase down the truth.