John L. Emerson passed peacefully from this life into the next at home on February 8, 2006 at 10:30 pm.  He was born at the National Homeopathic Hospital in Washington DC on December 12, 1947.  He grew up with his loving step father, Burt, who was a Marine serving as a combat photographer in four wars, and his mother Eileen who worked many years at the Pentagon.  The "best year of his life" was the junior high school year spent in Gorham, NH with his grandparents.  While his heart was in the NH White Mountains, he and his parents traveled the country and to Japan, where he spent his high school years.  He joined the Air Force when he graduated from high school and served in Vietnam.  John worked for the USPS in Portland, Maine.