Dr. John Clemson, a dental surgeon and charter pilot, died Nov. 18 at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda from complications of a head injury suffered in a fall last month at Manor Care nursing facility in Chevy Chase.

He was 78 and had lived in Towson.

Born in Westminster, he attended local schools before he went to the former Charlotte Hall Military Academy in Charlotte Hall, where he graduated at age 16. He attended Harvard University for about a year in the early 1940s before he was drafted into the Army to serve in World War II.

He served in the Pacific theater and was awarded a Purple Heart after he was hit by shrapnel in the legs while manning a machine gun at Okinawa.

After his discharge, he returned to Harvard for another year before he left to attend the University of Maryland Dental School. He earned a degree in dentistry and then rejoined the Army as an officer and was stationed in Williamsburg, Va.

After his second discharge from the Army, he moved in the mid-1950s to Towson, where he maintained a dental practice.

In the 1960s, he began taking flying lessons at a small airport near Churchville and became licensed as a charter pilot. He operated a charter air service, based at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, and flew customers and freight to airports along the East Coast when he wasn't practicing dentistry.

He retired in 1994.

In 1951, he married Anne Howard Fitchett Stick and in the mid-1960s he married Sandra Anne Shettle. Both marriages ended in divorce.

Services were held Saturday.

He is survived by two sons, John Howard Clemson of Ruxton and Gordon Scott Clemson of Mount Charleston, Nev.; a sister, Katherine Clemson Turner of St. Inigoes; and one grandson.