posted 09-01-2004 12:36 PM               

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Dr. Walter M. Johnson, 76, of Prospect Street, a retired Navy lieutenant commander and surgeon, who served with the Mercury space program, died Monday at Morton Hospital, in Taunton, Mass.

...He also had served with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, working on the Mercury Project and the first American manned orbital mission, the Feb. 20, 1962, Mercury-Atlas flight of astronaut and later U.S. Sen. John H. Glenn Jr., who circled the Earth three times aboard the Friendship 7 before splashing down in the Atlantic.

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