John Robert Siemer, late of Sandy Point Maine, was born in 1936 in St. Louis, Missouri, the second son of John Herman Siemer and Myrtle Kerls, and younger brother to William (Bill). Several years after his mother’s death in 1941, his father remarried. Irene Kabat became the woman he would know as his mother. Her daughter Betty Jean Kabat would become his older sister.

John served in the Missouri National Guard from 1952 to 1955 and enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1955, directly after graduation from De Andreis High School. He was promoted to Ensign in February 1962, upon completion of Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island, and moved to California where he was picked up by his future wife, Jacquelyn Yvonne Graber, an elementary school teacher originally from Ohio, at the Officers’ Club in San Diego.

John and Jackie married in 1963 and, with their two children, spent the next 20 years traveling around the world twice and to the Wayne County Fair. After retiring from the Navy in 1983, John continued to wear his uniform, then as a Naval Science Instructor in the NJROTC program at Grove City High School in Ohio, where he taught until finally retiring in 1996.

John and Jackie then enjoyed over 25 years of retirement in Fairfield Glade, Tennessee, golfing, fishing, dancing, playing cards, digging a pond, getting together with many friends and just generally enjoying retirement very much.

They both moved to Maine in 2022 to be closer to family. They celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary one month before Jackie’s death in 2023.

John is survived by his daughter Joanne Hazelwood, son Jeff Siemer and his husband Jerry Dunn, and grandchildren James, Sarah, John, Elizabeth and David. Additionally, he is survived by nieces and nephews and many friends around the country.

John died peacefully, surrounded by the love of his family and friends, in person, over the phone and in spirit.