John James Witherspoon was fighting for Ukrainian sovereignty against Russia when he was killed in action on January 17, 2025.
That day, some 4,700 miles away in Charlevoix, his mother, Sandra Witherspoon felt something wasn’t right.
“I normally don’t get anxiety attacks, but the morning he was killed, I had an anxiety attack,” she said. “I’m thinking what’s going on?”
It wasn’t until a week later that his family found out he had been killed. Russian forces captured his body and held it for over a year.
He returned home to Charlevoix on Wednesday, where he lay in state for 48 hours. Today he will be laid in his final resting place, Greensky Hills Indian Cemetery.
“He lived to the hilt,” his mother said. “He enjoyed life. He had a lot of fun. But I couldn’t talk him out of his desire to go into the military.
“When he signed up with the International Legion. He initially told me he was going to be a welder … He just told me that so I wouldn’t worry.”
Family and friends say Witherspoon was a talented and joyous man. He played guitar and saxophone and graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy.
After graduation, he attended Western Michigan University for a short time before he set off to travel the country. When he returned home, he became a certified welder. But he felt his true calling was the battlefield.
“In our culture it’s a huge honor to be a warrior and a veteran,” his mom said. “Ever since he was a young boy, that was what he wanted to do.”
Witherspoon was a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. According to his obituary, he decided to go to Ukraine to “defend the freedom, sovereignty, and ancestral lands of innocent people.”
“Their history and ours are parallel,” his mom said. “Here, we lost our land. Our sovereignty and our land means the world to us. And he went there to defend their sovereignty and their land. He was always rooting for the underdog.”
On Wednesday at the Charlevoix Township Hall, Witherspoon’s father, also John Witherspoon, led a ceremony at the foot of his son’s casket.
He spoke of his son’s curiosity and his philosophical nature, saying his son “felt in his heart and in his spirit that if he could use those to help others, he was gonna do it.”
Witherspoon says his son was a force for good — fighting to defend the most basic human rights of sovereignty, peace, and freedom.
“One of the things John wanted most in his life was to understand and begin to repair the damage done to love. The damage done to kindness. The damage done keeping the races apart. He wanted to fix it.”
A few miles away at the Bridge Street Tap Room in Charlevoix, Gary Grapp sat at a barstool. He had just come from the township hall, where the other mourners were gathered. He and Witherspoon used to play guitar together, and often sat together at the bar.
He remembers when he found out Witherspoon had died in battle.
“I realized I wasn’t gonna play guitar with him again for many many years until I see him again on the other side,” Grapp said, holding back tears.
“I came right down here and I sat in my chair and thought about all the times he and I have sat here talking about everything under the sun – fishing, guitars, the lake, the weather, everything. He was a great friend.”
A procession today will take John James Witherspoon from the Charlevoix Township Hall to his final resting place at Greensky Hill Indian Cemetery.
