Charles V. Komppa killed by roadside bomb

BILLINGS — Charles “Chuck’’ Komppa was nearing the end of his term as a reservist in the U.S. Navy when his Billings-based unit received word it would be sent to Iraq — a month after he was to return to civilian life.

He chose to re-enlist, telling family and friends he felt called to serve.

“His heart was to go — there wasn’t a question in him,’’ said Allen Solheim, the pastor at Absarokee Evangelical Church, where Komppa, of Absarokee, served as a volunteer and devoted member with his wife, Delisa, and their two children, 14-year-old Alicia and 11-year-old Gary.

On Wednesday, Komppa, 35, was killed in combat.

The petty officer 2nd class was riding in a convoy in the Al Anbar province of Iraq when his vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device, said Lt. Cdr. Jonathan Hughes, who oversees the naval training center where Komppa drilled with his unit. He was a combat electrician in the 3rd Naval Construction Regiment and assigned to the Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 18, Detachment 0618.

He is the 13th Montanan to be killed in the Iraq war.

Komppa, an electrician at the Stillwater Mine in Stillwater County, was no stranger to military service. After graduating in 1990 from Ingram High School outside of San Antonio, the Texas native signed on for a five-year active-duty enlistment in the U.S. Navy.

That included a deployment to Operation Desert Storm, in which Komppa served as a boiler operator aboard a naval vessel in the Persian Gulf, Delisa Komppa said Thursday.

After his discharge, in 1995, he set out to accomplish two longstanding goals: to become licensed as an electrician and to move his family to Montana.

’’He loved the mountains and wanted to be here,’’ Delisa Komppa said.

The family settled on Belgrade. Komppa worked as a boiler operator at Montana State University in Bozeman and then as an electrician at Leister Electric in Livingston.

In 2003, Komppa accepted a job with the Stillwater Mining Co., where he maintained electrical equipment at the Stillwater Mine’s ground-level mill site. That’s also the year he re-enlisted as a reservist in the Navy, a move he’d been discussing with his wife since shortly after Sept. 11, 2001.

Delisa Komppa said her husband ’’felt it was something he needed to do.

“I felt otherwise,’’ she said. ’’(But) you see how it changed our world. I just started to see it the way he did. If everybody felt the way I did, who would be willing to go?’’

Komppa re-enlisted for a six-year term in June, knowing his unit would be deployed July 17. He had discussed his decision with family and friends, including Solheim, whose son is in his third deployment to Iraq with the U.S. Army.

“He talked to me about the possibility of (dying), and that never changed his mind,’’ Solheim said. “He had a real sense of duty and a real call to serve.’’

Despite living in Absarokee for only three years, Komppa was known as a caring community member. He donated many hours of electrical work at his congregation’s new church, lent his talents to friends and neighbors and once wired a house for a church member without charging a dime.

Komppa enjoyed fly-fishing and spending time outdoors with his children, and spoke warmly of his daughter’s first hunting trip last year, during which she took her first deer, family members said.

“He was like a rock, and he was the rock of our family,’’ said Delisa Komppa.

Since the family received word of Komppa’s death on Wednesday, friends and neighbors in Absarokee have flocked to the family’s home, bringing meals, running errands and offering comfort, she said. It’s been an ’’overwhelming response,’’ but it would not have surprised her husband, she said.

“Before he left, he said, ‘If anything does happen to me, I know our church and our community will come to our aid,’’ she said. “He was confident of that, and he was right.’’

From the Independent Record