February 19, 2016 • Seaside Signal • seasidesignal.com • 3A
Ferry’s ex-wife speaks of a damaged man
Klaaborg reflects on
Ferry’s struggles
By Erick Bengel
EO Media Group
The ex-wife of Phillip Max
Ferry — the man involved in
the fatal altercation with Sea-
side Police Sgt. Jason Goodding
— remembers him mostly as a
loving and well-intentioned, yet
thoroughly damaged, man who
wanted to be better.
Ingrid Klaaborg, a 61-year-
old Seaside resident originally
from Switzerland, met Ferry
in 1991, married him and gave
birth to their twin girls in 1993.
She divorced him in 1996 but
saw him regularly until about
2001, when he began retreating
further into drug abuse.
“Part of them go away,” she
said. “They’re unreachable.”
For the irst 10 years of their
relationship, though, she tried to
be a positive inluence on Ferry.
“I did better than average, I
know that. But you can always
do better, right? So maybe I
could have made a bigger dif-
ference,” she said. “I tried for a
long time, because I loved him.
And we still love him.”
When Goodding attempt-
ed to arrest Ferry on a felony
assault warrant in downtown
Seaside on Feb. 5, Ferry, 55, al-
legedly produced a irearm and
shot the oficer. A second Sea-
side oficer then shot Ferry.
Ferry’s family was notiied
the next morning.
“It’s a very tragic incident.
It’s very tragic when the end of a
story is like that. You keep hop-
ing that things don’t turn out this
way,” she said. “I’m really sorry
for everybody that got hurt.”
A week later, many of Fer-
ry’s relatives and some neigh-
bors gathered at Klaaborg’s
homestead on U.S. Highway 26
to pay their respects.
“There (were) people I didn’t
even know. They just showed
up,” she said. “It was quite
something, really.”
‘He knew his failures’
To the extent that Ferry’s
daughters — two educated and
well-adjusted young women
— enjoyed a stable upbringing,
they have their mother to thank.
For though Klaaborg tried
to make her marriage work, she
eventually realized she needed
to keep Ferry’s lifestyle away
from them.
COURTESY OF INGRID KLAABORG
Phillip Max Ferry, left, with
Ingrid Klaaborg in 1993,
when she was pregnant with
their twin daughters.
“He was never ugly to them,
but you notice bad things attract
lies. I shielded the kids from
that,” she said. “I just wanted my
children to have a normal life.”
Although Ferry could be a
helpful parent — to both his
daughters and to Klaaborg’s
sons from a previous marriage
— “he was not cut out to be a
dad,” she said. “It was too much
to ask (of) him, because he
couldn’t even really take care of
himself.”
When she inally drew the
line, Ferry didn’t hold a grudge.
“He knew his failures — and
that’s what made it hard for him,
that he knew his failures and
shortcomings,” she said. “He
knew how inadequate he was.”
Ferry tried to be an active
part of his daughters’ lives after
the divorce.
“He would remember birth-
days, and, whenever he was
able to, he would do something
nice,” she said. “My girls, they
loved him. And they knew that
he was a loving person, he just
... he just was not able to do the
best he wanted to do.”
Over time, he reached out to
them less and less.
“He would call every now
and then. He always was look-
ing for some sort of guidance.
And you try to keep a nice con-
versation,” she said. “You’re try-
ing to keep the positive mood;
that’s really all you can do. You
can’t run somebody like a pup-
pet on a string, but you can try
to keep the positive mood inside
somebody going.”
Early childhood
education
Klaaborg makes no excuses
for Ferry, who was a habitual
FAMILY OWNED & OPERATED
criminal. But she suspects the
path his life took can be traced
back to childhood trauma.
“He wasn’t a spoiled child.
Deinitely not,” she said.
She said Ferry, who was ad-
opted, dropped out of school in
ifth grade and spent much of his
life functionally illiterate. Many
of his letters from prison were
handwritten by someone else.
“He was embarrassed to
write because he didn’t know
how to write,” she said. “He
learned to read and write in the
prison system. He got much bet-
ter at it.”
Klaaborg, who is now a land-
scaper, worked as an elementary
school teacher in Switzerland
and at Head Start in Seaside.
She has long been an advocate
for funding early childhood ed-
ucation, something she believes
Ferry could have beneited from.
“Every time a new person
is born, there’s a new chance,”
Klaaborg said.
Ferry was in and out of jail so
often that it stopped fazing him;
he became accustomed to pun-
ishment, she said.
“If you’re looking for reg-
ularity, and you’re looking for
structure, jail provides that. You
get a meal, you’re warm ... It
doesn’t ix the problem,” she
said. “What ixes the problem
is, you have the early childhood
education values. That’s what
prevents it. Everything else is a
Band-Aid after that ... That is his
life story.”
One of Ferry’s daughters
now works as a toddler teacher
in Washington state.
“What I care about is that we
learn something from this tragic
incident,” Klaaborg said, adding
in a message. “I hope this world
can lay the grounds to prevent
this by raising happy, strong
children that can be responsible
for their actions.”
‘We loved him’
Days after the Seaside shoot-
ing, Klaaborg opened a German
Bible that Ferry had given her
more than a decade ago.
Flipping through the pag-
es, she discovered a note from
Ferry — an epitaph for their
relationship — scrawled on a
yellow Broadway Cab receipt
(in someone else’s handwriting,
of course):
“Always will I love you. But
it’s time to go our separate ways.
You can’t do things to hurt your-
self anymore because of me.
You are free, and I wish it could
Ferry had stayed at
halfway house but
was asked to leave
By Lyra Fontaine and R.J. Marx
EO Media Group
The transient who allegedly killed a Sea-
side Police sergeant in a shootout Friday
night struggled with anger and substance
abuse and was described as “a complicated
man with a lot of issues.”
Phillip Max Ferry, who was killed after be-
ing shot by police, was on post-prison super-
vision and had a history of assaulting police
and resisting arrest.
A visit to the last three places in Seaside
where Ferry allegedly lived before Friday’s
shooting included Restoration House, a non-
profit organization providing housing after
prison.
Ferry lived at Restoration House 13
months ago, but has been a transient since
then, Executive Director Mark Terranova said.
“We are a clean and sober house and
when he comes out of jail, the corrections de-
partment uses us to house people,” Terranova
said. “They used us to house Phil for a period
of time, but he could never stay clean so he
lost his housing.”
After leaving Restoration House, Ferry
used addresses in Seaside on Third Street and
Avenue I.
Ferry was last seen on the Restoration
House property 10 days ago. He was kicked
out by one of Restoration House’s managers
after siphoning gas out of a car, Terranova
said.
“He was a complicated man with a lot of
issues,” Terranova said. “When certain types
of personalities keep drinking and using
(drugs), it’s not safe for the community and
that’s the number one priority, as far as I’m
concerned.”
Asked to leave
Terranova said that if the house can’t help
people, then they can’t live there.
“It’s often a discussion between correc-
tions, the courts, what’s best for the commu-
nity,” he said. “When it becomes a situation
have worked. I love you,” she
read aloud at her dining room
table, her voice breaking.
At some point, Ferry had
slipped it into the large an-
tique tome, which had once
belonged to his great-grand-
mother, along with an ul-
R.J. MARX/SEASIDE SIGNAL
Phillip Max Ferry lived at Restoration
House in Seaside before he was kicked
out for violating the facility’s “clean and
sober” policy.
where all the wraparound services fail, then
we can’t have him or anyone like that living
here.”
Ferry was compliant during his time at the
house and when asked to leave, Terranova
said.
Since the shooting, police have asked
questions at Restoration House as part of the
investigation.
Terranova also knew Sgt. Jason Goodding,
the officer who was killed. “He would come
here on occasion, whether to come for emer-
gency calls or dealing with individuals in the
streets. He was a fine young man, and it’s a
great loss,” he said.
Under supervision
According to state Department of Correc-
tions Communications Manager Betty Bernt,
Ferry was on post-prison supervision since
October 2012 and would have been under
supervision until June.
John Orr, an attorney in Astoria, knew
both Goodding and Ferry. “He was a diligent,
thoughtful and intelligent officer,” Orr said.
“That combination of qualities made him an
irreplaceable asset to the law enforcement
community.”
Orr was one among many lawyers who
represented Ferry over the years.
“There is attorney-client privilege that sur-
vives the death of the represented party,” Orr
said. “I can say that his problems appear to
have derived from chronic substance abuse,
which over time, took its toll on his faculties.”
trasound scan of Ferry and
Klaaborg’s twins dated two
months before their birth.
He could not have known
that Klaaborg would ind the
items only after his death.
“I never took the time to re-
ally look until just a few days
ago,” she said. “I open it up, and
I see all this stuff inside it.”
EO Media Group reached
out to both of Ferry’s daugh-
ters for this story; one did not
respond, and the other said she
wasn’t ready to speak publicly
about her father.
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