Joshua Tibbetts was a respected Maine Game Warden who was loved by everyone, but he was also the father to two daughters.
They were daughters Tibbetts should have had more time with, his eldest child, Allison Tibbetts, said Thursday at her father’s memorial service.
“So many people know him through his work and respected him for it,” Allison Tibbetts said. “The most important part of who he was, was simply that he was my dad.”
Tibbetts, 50, died May 12 after his plane crashed in rural Franklin County while he was helping stock fish. He was an 18-year veteran of the Maine Warden Service, including three years as a pilot.
About 2,000 people, the vast majority of which were law enforcement, gathered at the Cross Insurance Center Thursday for Tibbetts’ memorial service. His death was the first line-of-duty death for a game warden since March 2011, when pilot Daryl Ray Gordon’s plane crashed onto a frozen Clear Lake near Ashland in Aroostook County.
Tibbetts is the 16th game warden to die in the line of duty in the agency’s 146-year history.
The Cross Insurance Center was silent for nearly an hour as Maine wardens and law enforcement officers filed in and waited for Tibbetts’ casket, covered in an American flag, to be carried into the arena. Bag pipes and drums played as wardens brought his casket inside.
Stories of Tibbetts’ youthful escapades, as well as his continued love of adventures and nature as an adult, drew laughs and tears from attendees during the ceremony that lasted over an hour.
Tibbetts was the best brother his older sister, Tricia Tibbetts-Clifford, could have asked for, she said during the service.
“Ours was a free-range childhood in the best possible way,” Tibbetts-Clifford said.
She described spending hours playing outside, riding bicycles and then snowmobiles. The siblings loved skiing and would take trips together as adults with their families.
Not only were they siblings, they were friends, which is lucky, Tibbetts-Clifford said.
“Josh and I could call each other to celebrate our successes and happy moments,” Tibbetts-Clifford said. “We could just as easily call to talk about our struggles and challenges.”
Family was incredibly important to Tibbetts, Maine Warden Service Colonel Dan Scott said. Scott knew Tibbetts for more than 25 years because his father, Doug Tibbetts, was also a game warden.
“Josh followed his dad’s philosophy: If you weren’t having fun you were doing something wrong,” Scott said. “Josh had fun but he also took his work seriously.”
Scott remembered when Tibbetts’ daughters, Allison and Viviann, were born, he said. Tibbetts would beam when he talked about his children, who were the “light of his life.”
The Tibbetts family will forever be supported by their warden family, Scott said. The wardens will think of Tibbetts when they hear planes overhead when they’re in the woods, Scott said while choking up.
Tibbetts’ partner, Kim Robash, shared how the pair would talk for hours, watch reality TV and eat ice cream together, she said.
“We were supposed to continue our love for a lifetime,” Robash said. “My heart is broken in two.”
The night before Tibbetts’ death, he and his sister talked on the phone for 39 minutes, which Tibbetts-Clifford said she will cherish.
“I’m forever grateful I had that time with him,” Tibbetts-Clifford said. “I will miss him more than words can say.”
After hearing from friends and family, law enforcement proceeded outside, where the memorial concluded with the playing of taps, a 21-gun salute, a flyover with two helicopters and two airplanes, and a folded American flag presented to Tibbetts’ mother, Barbara Tibbetts.