Pete Jacobson died in his sleep of a heart attack Monday, August 25, 2014, at his home in Forks.
He was born in Snoqualmie, Washington, to Flora Melinda Johnson Jacobson and John M. Jacobson. They moved to the Forks area, where Pete’s father was a design engineer of train trestles during the Great Depression.
After his father died of an accidental injury, Pete’s mother married John H. Lynch, who ran Olympic Garage and drove a log truck, harvesting the big spruce forests.
When that marriage ended in divorce, Pete, as the eldest child, helped feed the family by hunting and fishing.
He also worked at Smith Shingle Mill while attending and graduating from Quillayute Valley School. He worked as a commercial fisherman, then joined the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War.
He later worked as a design engineer on the SAC missile silos, then as a test engineer on the Boeing jets in Moses Lake, Washington, where he married Betty Hammonds in the 1950s.
He worked on the Gemini Space Program for NASA, and one of the capsules he built is on display at White Sands Museum in Arizona.
But Pete loved Forks, fishing the rivers, the ocean and hunting. So he and Betty spent the next 40 years building a life and businesses — first a repair business, Jacobson’s Welding, and later a mill, forestry company and logging firms.
Betty passed away in 1999 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Pete retired to land developing in Kitsap and Clallam counties, spending his winters hunting in Alberta, Canada, and Eastern Washington, or fishing off the Baja Peninsula, Mexico.
He took up pickling and smoking fish as a hobby, and many people made big donations for “Picklin’ Pete’s” pickles at the annual scholarship auction.
In 2008, he and Lorraine Maris eloped to Bullhead City, Arizona, and spent several winters exploring the desert southwest, settling in Yuma, Arizona, as snowbirds.
In Yuma, Pete became a “gleaner,” picking vegetables left in the fields and delivering them to people who couldn’t get out there.
He was preceded in death by his son, John “JJ” Jacobson, who died of cancer August 18, 2013, and his brother Jake Jacobson.
Survivors are his wife of Forks, daughter Cindy Jacobson of Forks, sister Phyllis Byars of Port Angeles and brother John Lynch of Forks.
He has four grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren, three stepsons and several beloved nephews, uncles and cousins.
Pete asked for no funeral services, but his family asked for a memorial service at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1301 Calawah Way, Forks, on Saturday, September 13, at 2 p.m.
