It is with great sadness that the family of John Henry Cashwell, III, announce his passing on November 24, 2025. John was born on October 25, 1947, with nine lives, though he would go on to live about 100. The son of Marjorie Hazel Pingree and John Henry Cashwell Jr., he was the third of five children growing up in Derry, New Hampshire, on the Pingree family dairy farm.

John was an extremely affable man, known for his infectious and irreverent sense of humor. He had an extremely sharp sense of direction, resourcefulness, and problem-solving. You'd never catch him calling himself a feminist, but he married one and raised two, and loved tough women who didn't suffer fools (finding himself on the receiving end, from time-to-time). He loved soaking up the sunshine with family and friends, watching a storm roll in from a bar stool, or catching a beautiful sunset from the deck at Oak Bay. He would proudly admit he got teary-eyed over rainbows, and the song "Over the Rainbow" performed by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole was his song with his daughters, never failing to get him choked up. He loved a "family walkabout" downtown to his favorite haunts, and having a house full of children and grandchildren (up to a certain point, that is, when the calm of the barstool called). His motto was Popeye's "I yams what I yams." John was full of laughter and fun - and heaps of mischief. He was known for his stories; we've done our best to bring them together here. Pour a drink for him if you're inclined as you read on.

Born into two farming families, John was raised by his mother, father, and later stepfather, and his beloved nana, Edith Pingree, played an enormous role in his life. His early years were spent with cousins and siblings on the family dairy farm, caring for and milking cows (including his own beloved Priscilla), helping slaughter pigs, haying, shoveling manure, and doing myriad other farm chores that he credits with making the Army an attractive proposition. An airshow of World War II-era planes made clear for him early that he wanted to be a pilot one day, and he read every World War I and II flying story he could get his hands on. He was also a proud Eagle Scout, and the words of the Scout Oath ran in his blood throughout his life. In 1966, soon after graduating high school, he enlisted in the Army, despite knowing he would be deployed to Vietnam, to ensure he could follow his dream: to become a pilot.

John Nichols (his stepfather's last name) graduated from Helicopter Flight School as a Warrant Officer at 19 years old. 24 days and a "duffel bag drag" later, he boarded a cargo plane for the Mekong Delta near Saigon to join the Ninth Infantry Division. He was afraid, uncertain, and full of self-doubts, but during that flight committed to believing he was invincible. He would fly that way, and if need be, die that way. That resolution would save his life (and others') many times on his combat missions.

On August 30, three days after his arrival, he had his first flight in country. Between then and Thanksgiving 1967, he flew 330 hours and made about 1200 landings - in rice paddies, jungles, artillery fire support bases, Navy ships on the Mekong River, and small navy boats in the canals. He delivered ammo, food, mail, officers, and Red Cross nurses. He picked up wounded soldiers, often under fire. One of the youngest pilots (and catching hell for it in the officers' club) he nonetheless navigated it all with a paper map in the cockpit, his eyes, and his instincts. His skills quickly earned the respect of his fellow pilots, and he requested transfer to B Company (the unit flying heavily armed C-model Huey gunships). He became a 19-year-old gunship pilot with a call sign Stingray 56, a name he used throughout his life with his Vietnam brothers.

As a gunship pilot he was on standby to respond with fire power against incoming mortars and rockets into base camps, going from asleep in bed to airborne in under a minute when needed. He gave air cover to soldiers during infantry, artillery and special operations on the ground in every way possible. He had no night vision aids, and relied on naked eye and distance estimations during night missions. He spent a lot of time exchanging "Johnny Walker Wisdom" with fellow soldiers and Red Cross nurses, many of them remaining friends for the rest of their lives. Of the people he was deployed with in particular, his brothers from B Company, 9th Aviation Battalion, 9th Infantry Division, D Troop, Third Squadron, Fifth Cavalry have been dear friends for life: Robert Schultz (his wingman), Carl Crowe, JB Duncan, Eloy Garcia, Billy Knight, Don Matthews, Mike Rasbury, and Gary Winsett.

John ended up flying two tours in Vietnam - his younger brother, Toby, was enlisted by that point and John signed up for a second tour, hoping they wouldn't be able to deploy his younger brother as long as he was serving in a combat zone. Based at Bearcat, later Dong Tam, and finally Vinh Long, he logged 1800 combat hours and earned many awards and medals (including two Silver Stars, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Army Soldier's Medal, a Bronze Star, the National Defense Service Medal, 44 Air Medals, a Purple Heart, and the Army Good Conduct Medal). John credited his time in Vietnam for planting a yearning to live life to the fullest, and be in full control of his life. He once said, "you've never lived til you've almost died. I will never have to make decisions regarding other peoples' lives as I did when I was 19 and 20. You laugh in the face of things that are trite. The desire to be me and be free developed there."

He returned to New Hampshire, where he became a jack-of-all-trades: carpenter, waiter, bartender, bus driver, even a one-time stint posing nude for art students. As he told it, "My grade point average was lower than my blood alcohol content and I needed to work for beer money." In 1971 he became a full-time ski bum at Waterville Valley, where he met his first wife, Alexis Sokolic. He also had his first of several golden retrievers, Jason the Wonder Dog, who could deliver John hammers up a ladder, drink next to him at the bar, and chased President Gerald Ford's golden retriever Liberty across the slopes during an official state visit. In 1974 John put his Army experience to use flying commercially in Oregon. His commercial flying duties took him across the west coast, from fighting fires in Alaska to dousing poppy fields in Mexico; the latter stint earned him a featured spot on Harry Reasoner's show "60 Minutes." He enrolled at the University of Missoula, Montana, in 1975. Still a working pilot, that year he performed an emergency helicopter evacuation for a hiker who slipped on an icy ledge in Montana, and fell five hundred feet down a jagged slope suffering massive head injuries. Almost 50 years later, John took his daughter to watch that hiker, Hank Williams Jr., perform on stage at the Bangor Waterfront.

John graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Forestry in 1979 and began looking for a helicopter job back east. He was hired by Georgia Pacific based out of Woodland, Maine. Asked how he chose to stay in Maine, John said he was on the fence about the move until he lost his wallet on Route 9 after interviewing for GP. Eventually he located the kind strangers who found it, accepted their invitation to dinner, and stayed up talking late into the night. That interaction convinced him that Maine would be home. John stepped into the cockpit of GP's new Bell 206B Jet Ranger to look after 800,000 acres of forest in Maine and New Brunswick, spending the next 6 years fighting fires, fertilizing tree stands, bucket-dropping salmon parr to stock the upper St. Croix River, and performing any other duties that required an expert pilot. At GP he met his best friend for life, Douglas McLellan.

In 1981 John was elected to Calais City Council and soon became mayor. He was committed to improving the physical and economic character of Calais, and believed that listening to local people and harnessing local talent was the path to improving quality of life without negatively impacting Washington County's unique character, environment, and people - many of whom became his dearest, lifelong friends. He summed up his outlook as "you either keep your eyes on the prize, or on the contest;" John always focused on the contest. He learned how to use the media to get things done, applying that skillset to engage the local newspaper and TV stations around the need for a heliport at Eastern Maine Medical Center (now Northern Light Hospital) to speed up emergency services for lumbering accident victims from the Northern part of the state, among others, who were at the mercy of inadequate systems to rush them to medical help. He was also good at getting himself in the paper. In 1981 he was called upon to testify in a book banning case surrounding language in "365 Days" by Michael Glasser. That went to the Maine Superior Court, and the case (and John's colorful remarks in defense of the book) drew national media attention.

John's helicopter skills came in handy once again when he took his future father-in-law on a helicopter ride to ask for his girlfriend, Julie Norton's, hand in marriage. John always claimed he gave his blessings while looking wide-eyed out the window at 1500 feet elevation. In 1982 John married Julie, a teacher at Princeton, and they soon began building their own home on a hill surrounded by blueberry fields in Calais (affectionately known for its rough finish as the "plywood palace" or Camp Cashwell). When they married, John decided to change his name from Nichols back to his birth name, John Henry Cashwell III, so he and Julie could pass that name on to their future children. Their first daughter, Morgan, was born in 1983, and their second, Mollie, in 1986. His daughters were the lights of his life.

John continued to serve his country as a pilot with the National Guard starting in the 1970s, retiring with the 112th Med-evac National Guard out of Bangor, ME, in the early 1990s. He also served in Germany in 1990 to cover a unit stationed there who were deployed to Iraq during Operation Desert Storm.

In 1987 he became director of the Maine Forest Service, where he would be an instrumental leader and policy champion, finding the right path through strong differing opinions while maintaining his well-known lack of patience for nonsense. Some of his proudest work was the drafting and passage of the Maine Forest Practices Act, a bill that would improve how clearcutting and other forestry practices were managed in the state, as well as modernizing the state's fire control helicopters and airplanes. He was also appointed ex officio to the Baxter State Park Authority, where he was instrumental in improving the park, which inspired many memorable family trips to Baxter.

In 1993 he relocated to Winterport to serve as the head of Seven Islands Land Company in Bangor. Under his leadership, Seven Islands became an innovative leader in the forest management space. John also played a key role in helping to create the largest conservation easement in the country, working with the New England Forestry Foundation. He also served as chairman of Maine Woods Company, director of Portage Wood Products, president of Black River LLC and most recently, as a consultant to BBC Land LLC. In 2009 Maine Forest Products Council presented John with the prestigious Albert D. Nutting Award in recognition of his professional reputation, service to issues involving land management and environmental stewardship, and his commitment to community.

After moving to Bangor, John served on the Bangor City Council from 2003 to 2006, including several years as chair, helping shape the city's growing entertainment and performing arts landscape and waterfront developments. He was regarded as detail-oriented and pragmatic, where he again took many perspectives into account to seek compromise and win-win solutions. One of John's fondest memories of his service on the council was the year he personally donated money to fund the downtown ball drop on New Year's Eve. He believed downtown should be a vibrant place for fun and memories, and through the end of his life frequented a number of his favorite places, including the Sea Dog, High Tide, Evenrood's, 11 Central, Pepino's, Blaze and others. The staff and fellow patrons at these places became close friends, and sometimes even like family.

John was a systems thinker and problem solver to his last days, gladly lending an ear and dispensing his incredible instincts and problem-solving skills for family, friends, and even any stranger, who asked. He could also apply his wits (and helicopter pilot skills) to mischief. He once landed in the field in front of his family's house to give his two daughters a ride in the helicopter before they took the bus to elementary school that morning. He was known to pay back a friend's prank by hovering a helicopter low over his house in the middle of the night, stirring up a messy yard and angry spouse. And he once picked up an elderly neighbor in Calais and flew her to the mall in Bangor so she could do a day's shopping, landing in the mall parking lot and waiting patiently for her while applying his negotiation skills to keep at bay the blue lights that quickly surrounded the helicopter.

In the 1990s John rebuilt his wife's family's 1948 cottage on Oak Bay in New Brunswick. The "bay community" were some of John's dearest friends, and were like extended family. He planned his whole summers around when friends from Alberta, Nova Scotia, Quebec, PEI, British Columbia, New Brunswick, and Ontario would be at their respective cottages together, sharing drinks, parties, and laughs on the deck.

He also made sure to stay close with his beloved North Carolina family on his father's side, especially his great-aunt Ethel, one of the great loves of John's life. His cousins, JC and Margaret Cashwell, and other cousins, aunts, and uncles, were an important part of his life to the end.

Some of his family's fondest memories with John were on trips they took, whether it was to Hawaii and Tuscany with Julie, trips out West to celebrate family milestones, like his oldest daughter graduating or the birth of his first grandchild, or Central American adventures with Doug. He would also meet up with his daughter, Mollie, while she was living abroad for trips around Portugal, Spain, Austria, Germany and Croatia. John could be a great travel companion and loved adventure and exploring. He was contemplating a trip to Vietnam before he passed.

After all his brushes with death, he often said he felt like he was living "on borrowed time" and didn't expect to be a parent, let alone a grandparent. He was delighted by his grandson, Rory and granddaughter, Reese of Baltimore. His grandsons, Emil and Lee of Lamoine, also kept him on his toes on a regular basis and loved asking him what it was like to be a soldier and inviting him to their school Veteran's Day concerts. One of John's last gifts to his four grandchildren was a copy for each of a vintage 1960s Boy Scout manual, and he would have loved to watch them grow up using them.

John always lent an ear and advice to those in need, whether for his daughters or a stranger at the bar. Known as a "hero's hero" by many, his family remembers most fondly the John who cried in war movies, was a great cook, had surprisingly good taste in home furnishings, loved music, and took wonderful photographs of nature. The John who never let a special moment pass unmarked, unhonored; he insisted on flying the Union Jack at Oak Bay because his wife's Canadian grandmother lost her son in World War II flying a Halifax Bomber bearing the Union Jack. The man whose heart hurt deeply whenever one of his Vietnam brothers and sisters died. The John who would pull over to watch a moose or the Northern Lights, plant a tree for a deceased family member, or honor veterans of wars that happened before he was born. He loved thunder and lightning, and found it invigorating. He never missed admiring a blue sky, a full moon, an eagle overhead, or a heron eating a fish. He cherished his "borrowed time."

John is survived by his wife, Julie; daughter, Morgan Cashwell and her husband, Keith Adelsberger, and children, Rory Adelsberger and Reese Cashwell, of Linthicum, MD; daughter, Mollie Cashwell and her husband, Johannes Fischer, and sons, Emil and Lee, of Lamoine, ME; sisters, Susan Brander of Tennessee and Peggy Loomis of Florida; brothers-in-law, Bob Hoblitzell, Gene Loomis, Kirk Sirois, Donnie Norton; sister-in-law, Betsy Norton; his uncle, Robert Cashwell of North Carolina; many beloved cousins; dear friends, including Rick Warren, listener of all stories and worthy advisor; and his loyal co-pilot, Wilson, who is now in loving and familiar hands. He was predeceased by his sister, Donna Cashwell; brother, Toby Nichols; mother Marjorie Hazel (Pingree) Cashwell; father, John Henry Cashwell Jr.; his in-laws, Margaret and John Norton; many aunts, uncles and cousins, and many soldiers he served with.

He'd want us to remind you that "he was what he was," and that we haven't scratched the surface here on all his great stories. Bring those stories to his Celebration of Life on June 13 in the Lancaster Room at Hollywood Casino, Bangor (coffee reception at 9 a.m. and memorial service at 10 a.m). Email JohnCashwellMemorial2026@gmail.com with great John stories, questions, or for hotel information. Donations in his memory may be made to the Maine Veterans Project, Bangor Homeless Shelter, and Bangor Food Pantry. Condolences may be sent to Julie Cashwell, 147 Poplar St., Bangor, ME 04401.