Photographer, ride share driver, general contractor, wood craftsman, network engineer, artist and loving father of five. Also, a story teller with an encyclopedic memory, gourmet cook, bread maker and music lover (especially the work of country musician John Prine.)

That was John Michael Simon, 72, who battled cancer twice (leukemia and rectal cancer) and died in hospice care at his Tybee Island home Saturday, May 6, 2023, with his caretaker and partner of six years Lanie Lippincott Peterson and his caretaker and housemate Lindsay Elizabeth Peterson by his side. Michael was born in Grand Island, Nebraska on Nov. 6, 1950 to John Royce Simon and mother Gladyce Eivins Simon.

He grew up in small towns in Kansas, Colorado, and Nebraska where he rode horses, fished for trout and played a lot of basketball and football. (He was a defensive end.) He also excelled in track. When he graduated from Buena Vista High School in 1969, he got 32 offers for football scholarships. He chose to go to Fort Lewis College in Durango but transferred to Wheaton College, an excellent Christian school in Wheaton, Illinois. He started there as pre-med but graduated as an art major in 1973. He found romance at Wheaton, falling in love with former Wheaton nursing student Rebecca Ahlfeldt. Their marriage lasted 29 years. (Though it ended in divorce, they kept talking and ended up best friends.)

During and after college. Michael worked for several years in Colorado’s dangerous Climax mines. He spent ten years as a graphic designer. He worked more than 30 years as a contractor in Chicago, the Chicago suburbs and western Pennsylvania..In some of those jobs, he built elegant furniture-alters, pulpits, tables-for Catholic churches in the Altoona area east of Pittsburgh.

Michael was living in St. Louis when he fell head over heels in love for the second time, to journalist Lanie Peterson from Tybee. Theirs was a fairy tale romance. They met Dec. 29, 2017 on an airplane that left Bangor, Maine where they both had family.They were seatmates. And they got to talking. When they landed in Detroit, Michael asked Lanie for coffee at Starbucks. They talked another two hours and Michael almost missed his connecting flight. Before they parted, they exchanged phone numbers and email addresses. When they got home, they talked, emailed and texted an hour every night until March when Michael came to visit Lanie. He came back to see Lanie again in April and they decided to live together. In mid-April he put his things in storage and loaded up his Mercedes and drove fast, from St. Louis to Tybee. He said he’d be in Tybee at 6 p.m. He was late. He got to Lanie’s house on Tybee at 6:05. They were partners for life.

Michael is survived by sisters Lorie Race of Shoshone, Idaho and Barbara Bailey of Whitestone, Virginia. He has four daughters and a son, Meghan Catherine Simon Bangor, Maine, Erin Kathleen Simon of Bangor, Maine, Maureen Noel Simon of Winterport, Maine, Brynna Elizabeth Simon of Bar Harbor, Maine and Sean Michael Simon.

The burial of Michael Simon’s ashes will be private. But a memorial service for Michael and his large, Bangor. Maine family and many Tybee and Savannah friends will be held at All Saints Episcopal Church on Tybee Sept. 30 at 11 a.m