John T. Cannon
- Published: March 14, 2025
It is the saddest of news to report that John Tucker Cannon passed away early Saturday, March 8, 2025. He was 82 years young. He had been ill for a short while due to the rapid progression of Alzheimer’s Disease. But at the end of his days, he wanted to go.
John was preceded in death by his parents, Phyllis (Brumm) and Vernon Cannon; his most beloved wife and life-partner, Sigalia Dostrovsky Cannon; and his brother, Jerry (Kadir) Cannon. He is survived by family including his sister-in-law, Susan Gelber Cannon (wife of Kadir), and her two sons, Jevon Bajir Cannon and Ian Lateef Cannon. John is also survived by his brother-in-law, Jonathan Dostrovsky, and his adult children in the Toronto, Canada area.
Recently, John was overwhelmed with joy to be reunited — although they never really lost contact — with his paternal cousin, Robert Lawrence Cannon, and Bob’s wife, Jenneatte (Jaye) Cannon, when they were in the Yellow Springs area this past fall season. John is also survived by his cousin, Kimberley Hickock, of Nashville, Tennessee, daughter of Ann Cannon-Cook.
This past fall season, John was so very happy to reconnect with his maternal family members, including Gary Cornelius and Gary’s dear wife, Janis, who visited with John twice this fall season. They spoke of sweet and loving times, reminiscing about their childhood memories spent out at the Cannon Farm on Grinnell Road. John had been looking forward to connecting with his other cousin, brother to Gary, Chris Cornelius, and his wife, Shirley, of Montana.
John was always very proud of his maternal family and frequently quoted his maternal grandmother, who often spoke in poetic verse about the value of hard work even when it is a drudge. John’s maternal grandfather was a noble man who accumulated some great art while traveling in Europe in the 1920s and who nurtured his wife, John’s grandmother, to be a woman of strength and independence, who then passed that gift onto John’s mother, Phyllis. Both John and his brother, Kadir, learned to love strong, intelligent and independent and divinely loving and beautiful women.
John was born in Washington state. He lived in New Mexico, where his father worked as a physicist at Los Alamos before resigning from nuclear warfare in order to support the anti-nuclear-weapons movement. The family then moved to Yellow Springs in 1948 when his father became a physics professor at Antioch, and his mother served the Yellow Springs community with great love all of her given days. Since 1948, except when away at college, John has worked the family land that he continues to own at the intersection of Grinnell and Clifton roads.
As a mathematics protégé, John spent his junior year of high school at a boarding school in France and, upon the family’s return to Yellow Springs, he skipped his final year of high school and instead advanced to Antioch College where he completed his BS before attending Princeton University, where he earned a Ph.D. in mathematics. While there, he met the great love of his life, Sigalia, and the two became inseparable.
John went on to teach mathematics at MIT, The Rockefeller University in Manhattan and at Georgia Tech. He and Sigalia grew disenchanted with the field of academics and so moved back to Yellow Springs in the late 1970s, where they began investing in real estate with the goal of following John’s parents work of providing life-long affordable housing to tenants in Yellow Springs. At this time of his passing on Saturday, he still had 16 active lease agreements. Most of his tenants have lived in their homes for many years, including a neighbor, who has been in his rental home for 35 years. John thinks the world of all of his tenants. Each of you is precious to him.
John was recently asked about his love of life, especially during these days of dark politics and every human’s imposed contribution to irrevocable climate damage, as well as asking about his disdain of aging. John replied that he wanted to stay young forever in order to keep working on his rental units and “the farm” (especially when it involved riding his tractors) and that he wanted to continue to be a good landlord. He stated, “This is what gives me my greatest joy — to know that I am a good landlord and that my tenants have safe and affordable housing for the rest of their lives. … Being a caretaker to my tenants and stewarding our family organic tree farm and bird sanctuary, and securing my family land to safety by gifting it all to Glen Helen, well this is my life purpose and nothing is more important to me.”
John never really wanted to be known for his great work in life. He was and will continue to be a quiet worker of the Golden Rule who walks this universe very gently with great love and care for others.
John and I, Linda deRamus, were blessed to meet each other several years ago. Deeply, we love and care for each other. We spent hours and hours both working the land at his farm and sitting there in the woods and meadows, talking about life and love. John taught me about prime numbers and rhythms of the universe, which continue to overwhelm me with profound understandings of different and invaluable paradigms of existence. As a proclaimed atheist, John knows a God beyond any of our simple minds. He lives it. He had no need for scripture or ritual. In John, LIFE/ALETHEIA (Greek for THE Revelation/THE Highest Truth with a capital T) is his soul and his walk in life.
For me, of less grandeur, I taught John about psychology, philosophy, the classics and mythology, as well as the importance of feelings and the value in learning to express them and endlessly learning tolerance and mastery of what it is to naturally feel. This was a new world for John, and he was just as enraptured with my teachings as I continue to be with his. He was fascinated to learn late in life and never tired of asking me to say more about what it is to allow feelings.
We openly discussed the paradox of divinity and incarnation. We always knew that we were blessed to find each other. But, at times, town gossip has been incredibly cruel to us. Bitterness and horrific gossip about two older people falling in love has been so tremendously difficult and sad for John. The stress of people’s words to him and about our relationship compromised his health and have participated in his rapid decline. Vicious words, calls to extended Cannon family members and letters of grave concern to lawyers continue to cause us both hardship and pain. John always talked about how sad and dark the shadow side of Yellow Springs can be. He spoke about how he and Sigalia avoided the town, sequestering themselves from the dark shadows of this village. And yes, he and Sigalia both know that the shadow exists in every village and in most every heart. So they purposefully kept a low profile and John told me about this as this town’s darkness attempted to dampen his love for me and my love for John.
John spoke about the sadness because so many people in this world currently live alone. Young people, too. John and I saw and see it all over our Yellow Springs community. Many of you were quite vocal about your animosity towards our partnership. The resentment has been loud and clear and, unfortunately, it continues. But John and I consciously chose to partner with each other and to love each other every moment of how ever much time we had together. We both know that our relationship is heaven-sent and in no way took away from all of the other great loves that we have had in life. We wish that everyone could always remember that there is never a shortage of loving. Just do it. Please choose kindness and forgiveness. And when we mess it up, as John and I both have and continue to do, to please acknowledge mistakes, openly apologize to others and oneself and then just move on with love.
John and I consciously chose to continually learn and love together and to teach each other from our radically different perspectives about moving forward and supporting one another and to nurture and to lovingly bless each other every moment of our time together, until the day we pass on. We are still very blessed and also grateful to those who know John as a man of great integrity — that is how he expresses his great love — and I am grateful to those of you who understood John and me as a loving couple and a much-loved couple.
John will always be with us all. He is my sweet love, my most precious man. And I will, as I did long ago agree to do, take care of his home and his tenants and I will faithfully love and care for his sweet puppy, Arcturus, all the days of my life. Please say “hello” whenever you see us around town. John and I and Arcturus will always be grateful.
Untitled Poem
By Robert Paschell
(long-time tenant of John’s)
I am going to love you
without preregistering online.
Without rehearsal, a background check,
an appointment, a feasibility study,
or an environmental impact assessment.
I am going to love you right now.
In real time, in one take, face to face,
without reservations.
Because in this world of electronic go-betweens,
recorded messages, automated systems,
and artificial intelligence,
what else is there to do?
The Yellow Springs News encourages respectful discussion of this article.
You must login to post a comment.
Don't have a login? Register for a free YSNews.com account.
No comments yet for this article.