Joseph Hamilton Jobe
Joseph Hamilton Jobe, a one-time resident of Goldendale, was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on July 22, 2010. He was 93, the second of four children born to Lela “Christina” Hamilton Jobe and Clarence A. Jobe.
While a fulltime resident of Goldendale for only a few years, he had strong ties to the community because it was the home of his beloved extended family, who pioneered the area at “Old Number 6.” Joe was fond of saying that Goldendale was where he had “a town full of relatives,” and it was where he spent many summers and holidays.
Maternal grandparents Alexander and America Jane Hamilton, paternal grandmother Huldah Nunneley Myers, and the Conlee, Flannery, Davenport, Enwards, Young, Chamberlain, Crooks, Beeks and Sleeper families were among his many relations. When he was 10 years old, Joe and his Hamilton cousins climbed Mount Adams in their tennis shoes. Throughout his early adult years, he worked many jobs in the area—assembling fruit boxes at the Klickitat Pine Box Corporation’s plant just off Main Street, delivering milk for Orville’s Hamilton Dairy, doing odd jobs around town, serving as night watchman and assisting with displays at the Maryhill Museum of Art, and installing electrical towers from Grand Coulee Dam for the Bonneville Power Administration.
Before joining the Navy in 1941, Jobe graduated with the class of 1935 from Goldendale High School and attended WSU, Whitman College and UW. He was a highly decorated Navy pilot in the Pacific during WWI and received three Silver Stars for his heroism. He made the first bombing raid on Iwo Jima. When his fellow crewmen would refer to him as "the best pilot in the Pacific," Joe would humbly say that it was because he had the “best crew."
After the war, he met and married Shirley Isler, a beautiful Navy WAV at Sand Point Naval Air Station, and he was the third pilot hired by Seattle-based West Coast Airlines, purchased later by Hughes Air West and Northwest Airlines. He retired in 1976 after 30 years of accident-free flight and 30 years in the Navy Reserve.
Jobe was a 48th District Republican Chairman and, along with his wife, generously contributed to preserving liberty. Donations may be made in his name to Evergreen Freedom Foundation, Hillsdale College and Young America’s Foundation. Jobe always looked forward to Hamilton Family Reunions in Goldendale, which fell near his July 24 birthday, and attended them into his 90s.
He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Shirley Jobe of Peoria, Ariz.; daughter Jo-Ann Parrish of Duvall; sons Tim Jobe of Escondido, Calif.; Jeff Jobe of Sammamish; and Mark Jobe of Everett. He had 11 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
The lettering on the Klickitat County Pioneer Monument bearing the name of his ancestors will be refurbished in his memory.
