Kuno Hollriegel
On Tuesday, February 3, 2021, Kuno Hollriegel, loving husband and father, passed away after a long battle with Parkinson’s/Multiple System Atrophy at the age of 90 in Sandpoint, Idaho. A memorial service will be held at the Lakeview Funeral Home Chapel at 301 S. Olive Ave on March 26, 2021m at 11:30 a.m. with pastor Ken Smith officiating, a reception will follow after the service. The family requests that all who attend, please wear masks.
Kuno was born in Wuppertal, Germany, in 1930 to August and Anna Hollriegel. He was their third child, after his sisters Anna and Ilse. Coming of age during World War II, their family suffered through multiple bombings, were often forced to move and were sometimes separated from one another for months. They settled finally in Bad Aibling in the southern German state of Bavaria where he, after the war, completed an apprenticeship in woodcarving and fine carpentry.
He had long yearned to see the world, particularly the United States. In 1951, speaking neither French nor English, he immigrated to Quebec, Canada where he held a variety of jobs including truck driver and lumberjack. Later, in 1956, after obtaining a work sponsorship from a U.S. furniture manufacturer he was able to move to Herkimer, New York, where he resided for one year before moving to Los Angeles, California, in 1957.
In Los Angeles he worked at Pacific Airmotive Corporation building custom cabinetry for private planes. One fateful evening at a Hollywood ice skating rink a "collision" with a reckless skater, named Isabel Argueta, coincided with his meeting the woman who was to become his wife of 57 years.
In 1977, Kuno and Isabel, with their son Kuno, moved to Seattle where he worked for Boeing as a model maker in their wind tunnel testing division until his retirement in 1992 when he and Isabel moved to Sandpoint, where he enjoyed hiking, fishing and gardening. He especially enjoyed growing many, many pounds of German butterball potatoes and gallons of raspberries - maybe his favorite fruit.
He was a loving teaser, often with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. Ingenious, hard-working and resourceful, he was unafraid to take on any project, large or small, from building a Bavarian-style house, repairing a car, to building wooden toys for his grandsons. All of which he did with great success.
His great creativity, already apparent in the beautiful, often intricately carved, furniture he built, grew further when, in his 50s he took up painting, which had been his father’s professional occupation. The hundreds of watercolors and oil paintings he produced over the succeeding years demonstrated a great natural ability with an amazing eye for detail.
Always curious, his early love of seeing the world never waned and he and Isabel traveled to many countries all over Asia, Central and South America as well as Europe.
Kuno was a loving husband, father and grandfather. He will be greatly missed.
Kuno is survived by his wife Isabel Hollriegel, son Kuno Hollriegel, wife Theresa and grandsons Hannes and Anton, sister Ilse Ulrich (Hollriegel), niece Irene Ploetz, nephew Herbert Ulrich, in-laws Maria and Larry Leopold, nephew Aaron Leopold and niece Laura Leopold, brothers in-law Louie Argueta and Rolando Argueta.
Lakeview Funeral Home in Sandpoint, Idaho is handling the arrangements. Please visit Kuno’s online memorial at www.lakeviewfuneral.com and sign his guest book.