During SHOT Show Drake Clark reached me about helping out with an upcoming project. John Noveske had just passed away and Magpul was going to commit to a run of special “Johnny” PMAGs to raise money for his family. He asked if I would help. While I had only met John once through the introduction of Stickman, we had quite a few friends in common. And, I appreciated his hard work and innovation. “Sure,” I told Drake, “count me in!” Now, I know some of you guys are asking yourselves why the family of a guy who owned a business would need money. Well, my answer is simple. It’s for his kids. Very, very few small business owners are rich, or even well off. They work insane hours and put everything extra back into the business. And now, in the case of Noveske, John, the creative force behind the brand, is gone. It will never be the same and the lives of his kids will never be the same. As a father and small business owner, I can tell you, none of this was lost on me. It’s the reason I agreed to be a part of this and a reason I purchased some of these magazines when they were first available.
Now mind you, all of this planning for the Johnny mag was going on during the panic of 2013. Despite this, Magpul came through with the initial push which they offered in conjunction with Noveske. And then, another tragedy struck, and a similar magazine-based fundraising campaign came along. And during that period, in late Spring, 300 Johnny PMAGs showed up at my door. When I was planning to start this fundraising effort, I foolishly thought I could offer them through PayPal, but I soon found out that wasn’t possible. Then, eBay was a bust. SSD has a long reach but what we don’t have is a web store. Once the other fundraising effort ended I reached out to my friends at Grey Ghost Gear and they thankfully agreed to handle the sales aspect of this effort.
If you missed out on the initial run of Johnny mags, Grey Ghost has just under 300 (they are selling already). The Johnny PMAG is a Magpul GEN M2 30 round PMAG designed for 5.56×45 NATO and .223 Remington AR15/ M4 platform weapons. This memorial magazine includes the Noveske “Flaming Pig” on one side, and the Noveske logo on the flip side.
Please join us in supporting the Noveske and remembering an innovator by purchasing one or more of these memorial magazines.
www.greyghostgear.com/accessories/johnny-memorial-pmag
-Eric Graves
A lifelong shooter and outdoorsman, Eric served in the US Army before retiring from the US Air Force after 21 years of service. After his retirement Eric also worked in industry and has served as the Editor of Soldier Systems Daily since launching the site in May of 2008.
Tags: Grey Ghost, Magpul, Noveske
Thank you for helping. I never met John but close friends in common led me to know a bit about his “obsessions”. He was not one to care to much about the future. He went full speed ahead in his latest projects, win, lose or draw. If you were deploying he made sure you got your weapon in a timely manner. And as any small business owner will tell you, there’s usually a lot of lose in innovation. I doubt if anyone makes better barrels then Noeveske Rifle Works, and John was constantly pushing for more performance out of shorter barrels. A real pioneer who many have benefited from… even though John’s family never got much benefit personally. Whenever he did have two dimes they didn’t go into a 401K, those dimes went right back into the shop.