An icon of southern drag racing and a longstanding favorite face at “The House of Hook,” Carolina Dragway in Aiken, South Carolina, 86-year-old announcer Dent Johnson has presided over events for an astounding sixty years.

Born in 1937, Dent grew up on a cattle farm in rural Aiken County about a mile from where Carolina Dragway now exists. Back then, though, it was nothing but farms and fields as far as the eye could see and the man often rode his horse on a five-mile circuit around the region.

A diehard gearhead, Dent was diagnosed with polio as a young boy but never let the disease or his disability deter him from his dreams. “I tried round track racing but couldn’t drive the car, so I decided to go drag racing instead,” said Dent as he fondly recalled his youthful years.

As fate would have it, LB “Junior” Steed began building Carolina Dragway – originally called Jackson Drag Strip at the time – in 1957 and Dent was quick to get involved. The dragstrip itself was all dirt in the early days, with only a small, crudely paved section for the water box and starting line.

“We graded it, poured dry concrete, tamped it down real good, then wet it,” Dent shared of the makeshift methods used to get the job done. “It was dirt the rest of the way down, and we had a water truck that would wet the track during the races because it would get so dusty.”

In 1960, the track surface was finally paved up to the quarter-mile mark, but the shutdown area was still dirt – and it was a sketchy transition at high speed.

That same year, Dent began his incredibly fruitful yet short-lived career as a Super Stock driver. “I was a Ford man but I couldn’t outrun the Chevrolets, so I bought myself a 1960 Chevrolet Biscayne,” joked the genial gentleman. Dent tried out several engines over the year and stayed busy multiple times a week. “I ran 65 times that season and won 62 times. I left home planning on winning.”

Impressively, Dent even set an NHRA elapsed time record in 1960. “I lowered it from 15 seconds to 14 seconds… back then, that was fast! And we were on street tires, too!” he boasted proudly of his youthful accomplishment. “I raced a stick shift but I didn’t let the polio stop me. I’d put my foot on the clutch and just mash my knee down when I got ready to shift.”

Although he had a plethora of female friends, Dent had yet to find himself a true, committed girlfriend. “Nobody wanted to get attached to someone on crutches,” he clarified of how his polio deterred him from finding a partner. He wasn’t lonely, however, as he had a different girl with him each night of the week at each different race. “At the end of the year, I sold the car and lost the girlfriends!”

Dent moved to Statesville, North Carolina, to pursue a career as an industrial engineer but wound up working in a machine shop where he built racecar engines. In 1963, the young man returned to Aiken and to his beloved Jackson Drag Strip.

“Junior Steed was announcing, and he told me to hold the mic for him while he went to the bathroom, but he ain’t never come back!” laughed the octogenarian, who was in his mid-20s at the time and has been holding the mic ever since 1963.

That same year, Dent met his wife-to-be, Josephine, who also suffered from polio and had lost the use of her right arm as a result. “Jo” loved Dent despite his crutches and the feeling was quite mutual, as he proposed just two weeks after they had gone on their first date – a trip out to visit her First Baptist Church.

“The doctor told us not to have children because she couldn’t pick up a baby and I couldn’t carry one, so we did what he said but Jo got pregnant anyway,” said Dent with a smile. Raising a son certainly had its share of challenges for the two parents with polio, but Dent was creative in his problem-solving skills and together. “She couldn’t hang diapers on the clothesline and we didn’t have a dryer, so our doctor wrote a prescription for a dryer and our insurance paid for it!”

Together, Dent and Jo overcame all odds and obstacles and lived an incredibly happy and blessed life, filled with many “gifts from God.” Married 54 years until Jo passed away, Dent was – and still is – very much in love with both his wife and his life, and enjoys reminiscing about how much joy they both had regardless of the hardships.

Over the years, though, Dent stayed involved in drag racing and continued his career as a track announcer. “I announced at Jackson on Thursday, Ware Shoals [Dragway in South Carolina] on Fridays, and back in Jackson on Saturdays,” affirmed the man who occasionally took a short stint away, and even tried to retire in 2018, but always came back to where he belonged.

For Carolina Dragway, Dent has seen it go from a small, humble location to an NHRA-sanctioned, respected facility. From pavement projects to land expansion, lighting additions, a new control tower, concrete barriers, several different owners and more, Johnson has been there every step of the way.

Dent has seen some of the industry’s biggest and brightest stars build their careers, too. From attending Sunday School with Annette Summer, the reigning queen of Pro Street, to watching Stevie “Fast” Jackson” grow from a tenacious teenager to a two-time NHRA Pro Modified world champion, Dent has been there since the beginning.

“I’ve seen a lot of history and a lot of racecars, including Chris Cline’s ‘Christine,’” added Dent, whose home track has welcomed countless celebrity-status cars over the years. With vintage photos attesting to the occasion, Carolina Dragway even once hosted Richard Petty, “The King” of NASCAR who took a brief break from stock car racing for a short-lived shot at drag racing in 1965.

Now in his sixtieth season of working as a track announcer, Dent can’t imagine ever giving up his place on the property. “It’s good for me to be out here. Especially now, it helps keep my mind working to remember peoples’ names and their cars,” said the man, still as sharp as a tack and who likes to inject as much fun as possible into his announcing. Although he was relegated to a wheelchair (motorized, of course) many years ago, Dent still gets around just fine – and the track even installed an elevator for him in the tower so he can keep making a trip to the top. “I’ve got so much love here. This is what keeps me going.”

And he certainly is both well-loved and highly respected; on any given night, a steady stream of people eagerly climb three flights of stairs to the third story of Carolina Dragway’s tower just so they can pay their respects to, and visit with, Mr. Dent.

While no one ever knows when their last day on Earth will be, Dent hopes to continue as “The Voice of Carolina Dragway” for as long as the good Lord allows him to do so.