John “Jack” Tobin (Missoula ’59)
Posted: July 25, 2025
Jack passed away at age 82 in Vancouver, WA, on February 13, 2021. Born December 12, 1938, to John and Alice Tobin in Portland, OR, he grew up on the banks of the Willamette River, spending his days on the river and enjoying such pastimes as collecting arrowheads and fishing. He graduated from West Linn HS.
Jack attended Oregon State University, where he graduated with a forestry degree.
Jack jumped at Missoula in 1959. After he passed away, his son John found some letters Jack had written to his family during his jumping days. In one of them, Jack wrote about a couple jumps he’d made. “It surprised me the first jump,” Jack wrote. “I wasn’t very worried. I guess that I was too numb to realize what was coming off. On the second jump, I was pretty scared. I asked myself what the devil was I ever doing, jumping out of airplanes. That day, the air was real rough, and we were being thrown all over the airplane, a DC-3. It kind of bothered me to look out the window and see trees just about brushing the wing tips of the plane.”
Jack married Ellen Mount on June 29, 1963. She’d been his next-door neighbor growing up, and together they had two sons, Jeff and John. They would be married for 41 years.
Jack pursued a career in forestry as an employee of Crown Zellerbach, a company that took him and his family to many different timber towns in Oregon. The family eventually landed in Cathlamet, WA, where Jack became Director of Public Works for Wahkiakum County. He retired from that post in 2003.
Jack pursued many passions, including boating, fishing, camping, and gold-panning. He even tried acting in dinner theatre at the former Pierre’s restaurant in Cathlamet, taking a co-starring role in a Neil Simon play. His involvement with his community also included volunteering in scouting and serving on the local port commission. In 2003, he and Ellen were honored as Citizens of the Year by the Cathlamet Women’s Club. In 2004, they served as grand marshals of the community’s Bald Eagle Day Parade. Ellen died later that year.
Drawn to rivers, Jack settled on the banks of the Columbia River on Puget Island.
In a eulogy, his son John described Jack as follows: “calm, no-nonsense, purposeful, logical, prankster, outdoorsman, contributor, supportive, generous, the king of embarrassing Dad jokes, thrifty, witty, seemingly unbreakable, a good friend, a good buddy, a great leader, a great husband, a great dad, intelligent, not an overthinker, always wanted to do the right thing.” He was an NSA Life Member.
