Jason Tibbe

Jason Tibbe, 34, of White Cloud, died unexpectedly at home on Monday, June 8, 2026. He was an Army veteran of two deployments and a finish carpenter of rare skill, and if you live in this county there is a fair chance you have run your hand along something he made without knowing it — a stair rail, a mantel, the trim around a door — and found it smooth, and square, and warm.

Jason was born February 27, 1992, in White Cloud, the younger of Mark and Cindy Tibbe's two children, a quiet, watchful boy who took things apart to see how they worked and, unlike most boys who do that, could put them back together. He enlisted in the Army at nineteen and served two deployments overseas. He didn't talk much about the deployments, and it isn't the place to talk about them for him now; it is enough to say he went when he was asked, carried what he was given to carry, and the men he served with loved him and say they are better for having stood beside him.

When he came home he found his way to wood. He apprenticed to an old finish carpenter in Newaygo and turned out to have the gift for it — the patience, the eye, the steady hands. Finish carpentry is the last and most exacting work in a house, the part you see and touch: the crown molding, the built-in shelves, the joint that has to close to nothing. Jason could make a doorway look as though it had always been there. He measured twice and cut once and hated a gap the way other men hate being lied to. He built bookcases that will outlast everyone who ever reads from them.

He was dryly, unexpectedly funny, in a way that snuck up on a room. He was the uncle who actually got down on the floor. He loved his niece past all reason, kept a soft-eyed shepherd mix named Gunner who went everywhere he did, drank his coffee black, and would drive an hour to help you hang a door and wave off the gas money the whole way home. He was, by every account, a good man — good in the plain, load-bearing sense of the word, the kind you build the rest of a family around. He built doors for a living, and he was the sort of man who would hold one open for you with his boot while his arms were full.

The family asks that any veteran who is struggling call 988 and press 1. Jason would want the door held open.

He is survived by his parents, Mark and Cindy Tibbe of White Cloud; his sister, Laura (Sean) Ferris of Grand Rapids, and his niece, Ada, who was his favorite person on earth; his dog, Gunner; the crew he built alongside; and the men he served with, who have a name for one another that does not need saying here.

He was preceded in death by his grandfather, Walter Tibbe, a Navy veteran and a carpenter, who put the first hand plane in Jason's hands and told him to slow down.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that gifts be made to the Newaygo County Department of Veterans Affairs, so that the door stays open for the next one who needs it.