A Dreamer With 'No Fear'

John Micheal Spann

1 March 1969 - 25 November 2001

We had to draw a person for freshman art class. I chose Mike. I drew it the day of my Confirmation. His face is too broad here but I guess it's okay. I drew him twice. This one came out better.

"I believe in the meaning of honor and integrity. I am an action person who feels personally responsible for making any changes in this world that are in my power...because if I don't, no one else will."
--Mike Spann, a passage from his CIA application

I think this sums him up well.

There are no words that appropriately honor Mike, or anyone like him, but here are a lot that try:The above article came from the December 10, 2001 issue of Newsweek. Unfortunately, it didn't scan well so here's a close-up of the picture that first drew me to Mike:

Mike with his father Johnny at graduation from OCS

Maybe it's part of seeing the world as an artist or maybe it's just me, but I am most moved by images. There's something about this picture.

Stupidly, I didn't think of saving the article so I managed to retrieve this years later from the school library. I'm grateful for that. I'm retyping the entire article now...so you better read...not for my toil but for Mike's and the Spanns':

A DREAMER WITH 'NO FEAR'
By Kevin Peraino

There's not a whole lot to do for a boy growing up in Winfield, Ala. - a country town of 4,500 halfway between Birmingham and Tupelo, Miss. Johnny (Mike) Spann passed his school days like many other boys in town. He fished for bass in a nearby lake. He played arcade games and mini-golf at B.J.'s rec center, the local hangout. He snuck the occasional beer with friends in dry Marion County. He played Dixie league baseball and high-school basketball and football. But that was about the extent of the excitement in Winfield. There wasn't even a movie theater in town.

So Spann invented his own entertainment. Linda West, 58, his ninth-grade teacher, remembers giving her class that perennial assignment: what did you do on your summer vacation? Mike had most likely spent his summer as usual: bass, B.J.'s, baseball. But to liven things up, he fibbed. He told a tall tale about how he and his friend Lonnie had taken all summer to raft down the Alabama River, Huck Finn style. West knew the story wasn't true, but found it so creative she let him go on for weeks about it, allowing him to tack his adventure stories, complete with illustrations, to the schoolhouse walls.

It always seemed that the small youth, who lifted weights religiously to improve his physique, craved more excitment than Winfield had to offer. Spann went out for the football team his senior year, and was remembered for his fierce hits. He "had no fear of contact," recalls his coach, Joe Hubbert. "He was proving to himself that he was going to be a tough kid." At Hubbert's house one afternoon in 1987, Spann sat sprawled in front of the TV, watching "Top Gun" with his teammates. "That's going to be me someday," he told his friends. On another afternoon Hubbert took Spann aside on the practice field and asked him what he wanted to do with his life. I want to go to Auburn, then I'm going to be a Marine, then I'll join the FBI or the CIA, Spann told Hubbert matter-of-factly.

So he did, and last week became the first U.S. combat death in America's war on terror. At 32, Spann was typical of today's fighting forces in Afghanistan: gung-ho, yet accustomed to operating in anonymity. He left behind his wife, Shannon, and three young children. "We consider him a hero," Johnny Spann Sr., said of his son, the first in the family to serve in the military.

Spann pursued his dream relentlessly. He graduated from Auburn University in 1992, and soon after accepted an officer's commission in the Marine Corps. His eyesight wasn't good enough to serve as a pilot, so Spann spent most of his career as an artillery officer, traveling around the world. The Marines could sometimes be punishing. Once, he came home to Winfield with a black eye and broken ankle from a parachute mishap. "His eyeball was just blood," says his sister Tammy. He stubbornly refused crutches.

In his eight years in the service, the Corps had never fought a combat mission. And by the late 1990s, "he felt like he needed to do something more," says Tammy. In 1999 he joined the Special Activities Division of the CIA's Directorate of Operations - the paramilitary wing of the agency's supersecret espionage branch. In his CIA job, "he was constantly going," says Tammy. "He was fighting all the time."

In the days after September 11, Spann spoke to his sisters, telling them he badly wanted to go to Afghanistan. He told them he wanted to make the world a safer place for his children. During the first week in October, Spann got the orders he was waiting for, and he shipped out to northern Afghanistan. "I'm going to do something about this," he told his sisters. Last week he did, and he'll be buried as a hero for it.

(With Mark Hosenball in Washington)

I think I grew closer to Mike because I saw (see) a lot of myself and my life in him. Wallingford isn't necessarily Winfield, but we only just got a movie theater (I had to be informed of this since there's absolutely nothing to do in Wallingford other than rock climbing and cow and buffalo tipping). That's besides the point. I only just recognized that minor similarity today. I love reading and re-reading about his ninth-grade story because that's me all over. I'm stubborn when I'm injured. I hate "Top Gun" but I'll get over it. Well, maybe not hate. I want to be a pilot too but I also have bad eyesight so that's probably not going to happen.

But I will make it to Marine Captain one of these days.

That's a promise AND a duty.

I just figured out a good title for this blog...

I have an article about Mike from People magazine hanging up in my room. It's right by the lightswitch so it's the last thing I see when I leave and it's the first thing I think about when I enter because I usually pound the lightswitch so hard that I make the article fly up (and p.s., my lightswitch has cows on it).

When I went to DC as a part of Presidential Classroom, I had an awesome time everywhere (including the State Department...) but I hold closest to me the short time I spent at Arlington National Cemetery. I looked forward to it all week. When I got there, I went directly to the information desk to get the location of Mike's tombstone. #2359. Lot 34.

I was supposed to be at the wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in less than an hour. I had no idea where I was going and I can't read a map to save my life. (I know, stop laughing at me...I'm gonna get mine in bootcamp...it's actually kinda entertaining to watch me get frustrated over how to orient the map...). Jenna (from Maryland) and I ended up taking a half a gagillion wrong turns, became desperate, and then resorted to doing some cross country running in heels when no one was around.

The clock was ticking...common sense said we'd never find the tombstone and even if we did, we'd never get to the OPPOSITE side of the cemetery to make the wreath-laying ceremony. Plus, the lots aren't labeled in numerical order. 34 was next to 8 or 2 or something.

So we decided we'd never find the site and we ought to go to the ceremony lest we both get in trouble.

While walking pretty depressed, we noticed we came upon lot 34. My heart skipped. But the grave numbers were confusing to follow! It went from the 2360s to 2310s and I couldn't find 2359!

Sad can't even do justice to how I felt. I didn't want to give up, though. We were so close! Why give up now? Or even just in general? I still expected to get in trouble for showing up late to the wreath-laying ceremony.

My heart rate was far above a healthy level when I found the 2350s. I remember running down the row to find the one tombstone with yellow stones on the top. Yellow. Shining. You could have picked it out from a distance.

And we didn't get in trouble for being (miraculously, only slightly) late for the Wreath-laying ceremony.

Here are some links and some of my favorite quotes about Mike:

"We know from his quiet disposition that he wouldn't want all this attention," Pastor Wyers said. "But we also know he is an example for other young people."

Face to face against those bent on killing innocent men, women, and children, Mike stood strong, he stood tireless and fearless. That is the description of an American hero and Mike was one.

Half a world away, in a dusty, inhospitable and alien environment, Mike confronted our Nation's fiercest enemy eye to eye. He did this not because it was his job, but because he was compelled to ensure that all people, regardless of their nationality or religion, could live without the fear of being victims of terrorism.

Up to the moment of his death, Mike never stopped being a Marine. "Semper Fidelis." He was always faithful. He was faithful to the countless, nameless millions of Americans, especially those incapable of defending themselves.

We hold the greatest debt to Mike and to his family.

"Mike was faithful in giving his life to God and to his colleagues, his friends, his country and his family." Mrs. Spann said her husband "was a hero not because of the way he died, but rather because of the way he lived. He served his country not only by risking his life, but by being good. It seemed like when Mike took an oath to protect the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic, that he took that oath to our family as well. He just thought that it was really his duty as a father to protect his children from terrorism, just as equally as he thought it was his duty to provide a roof over their heads."

-- from Arlington National Cemetery website

My favorite picture of Mike, with his children Alison, Emily, and Jake (Jacob) right before he left for Afghanistan

At his funeral, the congregation sang his two favorite hymns, "I'll Fly Away" and "To Canaan's Land."

Mike is the 79th star on the CIA wall...

...and another one in Heaven

"where the soul of man never dies."

Godspeed, Mike, Godspeed.