PORT ANGELES — The man crushed to death when his jacked-up SUV slipped and fell on him was described Monday as an inventor and adventurer.
German-born Klaus Kommoss, 65, of Sequim was identified Monday by the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office as the man who was killed Friday at a Port Angeles repair yard.
Kommoss died at Angeles Collision Repair and Towing, 72 Mount Pleasant Road, after the Chevrolet Geo Tracker on which he was working rolled off scissor jacks, Sheriff Bill Benedict said.
Deputy County Coroner Christa Anderson ruled the death an accident, Benedict said.
Kommoss had the vehicle towed to the business, obtained permission to work on it and lifted it with the scissor-type jacks without blocking the tires or setting the emergency brake, authorities said.
Kommoss was trying to remove the tow bar shortly after noon Friday when the SUV slipped off the jacks and fell on top of him, Benedict said.
Efforts by the business owner and Clallam County Fire District No. 2 personnel to resuscitate him were unsuccessful.
Kommoss, a native of Germany, and his wife, Parvin, celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary May 29.
The couple was retired.
“He had many, many friends and admirers,” Parvin said Monday.
“He was a very, very, very adventurous guy,” she said.
“It was in his blood, and it was in my blood. That’s why we got married.”
Kommoss was hitchhiking through the United States in his late teens when he first visited the North Olympic Peninsula, she said.
Soon afterward, he worked in a shingle mill in Forks “and fell in love with the smell of cedar,” Parvin said.
The couple had visited the North Olympic Peninsula several times, concentrating their attention on Olympic National Park, before deciding to move to the U.S. in the late 1980s.
Parvin, a former physicist and an Iranian native, said her husband was an inventor of, among other things, a component used in disc players.
Kommoss describes himself as “an engineer with a very short and intense career” on his website, http://kommoss.wordpress.com.
“This blog is about two people who are happily drifting on the ocean of life, like temporary bubbles riding the waves and savoring the journey,” he blogged on the website, titled “A Life Times Two: The Adventures of Parvin & Klaus.”
The website shows photos of him paragliding over the Sequim area, of the couple bicycling and the two of them standing in the snow while climbing a mountain.
The two “live a pretty adventurous life in summer in the Pacific Northwest of the USA and winter in Mexico,” he said on his website.
The site also contains extensive, stand-alone stories about past adventures, some of which were published, and articles containing “general reflections.”
Under “Winters” on the home page, readers can read more about the couple’s “kayaking-fishing-exploring-life” in Mexico, and under “Summers,” they can read “posts about mountains and home life,” he said.
“Under poems, you’ll find just that,” Kommoss blogs.
The couple hiked extensively throughout the Olympics, and were especially drawn to 6,454-foot Mount Angeles south of Port Angeles.
“He would climb Mount Angeles with me 30 times a year to the summit,” Parvin said.
They last hiked the mountain a week ago.
“The cliffs,” Kommoss blogged under a photo caption of him paragliding near Dungeness Spit.
“Sometimes they create a good updraft that gives a lot of lift to soar in.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
