By David Dickman

Don Koss was a showman — a smart, witty, gravel-voiced performer who could just as easily have spent his entire working life on stage rather than at his chosen profession, pool and spa service and repair.

He was one of my dearest friends, and I was deeply saddened when I heard that he had died on Sunday, March 23, at the age of 88.

Don would have turned 89 on May 12, and the exact date of his birthday was the basis of a running gag that played out between us for more than 35 years.

I first met Don in September of 1987.

Service Industry News was in its first year of publication, and Don was a founding director of Pool Industry Expo, which was staging its first show in Milpitas, Calif.

We hit it off immediately. And in the course of the show, we had occasion to share several meals and numerous drinks. Turns out that we shared an abiding love of baseball, the appreciation of a good joke, and a trove of trivia that we enjoyed exchanging with one another.

When I learned that Don’s birthday was May 12, I mentioned that, coincidentally, my father’s birthday

Don Koss was a long-time president of IPSSA’s Redwood Empire Chapter and member of the Board of Regional Directors, and was an inspiration to countless pool techs. had been May 11. So it was easy for me to remember that Don’s birthday was only one day removed from my dad’s.

But when the following May rolled around, I couldn‘t remember if Don’s birthday fell on the tenth or the twelfth. So I called him on the tenth. “Thank you,” he said in response to my birthday greeting, “but it’s not for two days.”

I called him back on the twelfth. “Thanks,” he said, “but my birthday was two days ago.” It was typical of Don’s sense of humor — keep everything a little off-balance.

For the next three-plus decades, I would call or email him on the eleventh of May and apologize for missing his birthday by a day while at the same time wishing him Happy Birthday a day in advance. He always graciously replied, and this inevitably led to lengthy phone conversations or email exchanges and lots of laughter on both ends.

Pool Industry Expo gave us one chance to visit in person each year. His involvement with the Independent Pool & Spa Service Association (IPSSA) gave us another. As an IPSSA chapter officer or a member of the group’s Board of Regional Directors, we often found ourselves together at IPSSA’s annual installation.

Don’s involvement with IPSSA — and his career in the pool and spa industry — really began with his long acquaintance with Doug Tanner, Don’s closest friend for more than 40 years.

Don and Doug met in the 1950s. Don was a San Francisco native and Doug a recent transplant from Detroit. They were casual friends in high school and became close friends when they entered community college. There, Don, Doug, and another fellow named Doug Brown formed a folk trio called the Coachmen.

For two years, the Coachmen toured the country, performing on the East and West Coast, in music venues, on college campuses, and even on national television. They released two record albums. It was at a Coachmen performance at the University of California, Berkeley, where Don met his wife, Roberta, whom he married in 1961.

The Coachmen broke up after Doug Tanner was drafted into the army. On his return, Don and Doug went to work for Don’s father’s company — the Paul Koss Supply Company — selling cleaning and maintenance supplies. Capitalizing on their natural senses of humor and the skills that they had developed while in show business, they became successful salesmen.

But Don relished the prospect of being his own boss. In 1974, he established his own company, Marin Aquatics, in Novato, Calif., and resigned from his father’s firm. Doug followed suit, forming his own pool maintenance company. The pair also became active members of the California Independent Pool Serviceman’s Association — a forerunner of today’s IPSSA — and Doug served as one of IPSSA’s first regional directors when the group was incorporated.

The two friends continued to run successful businesses throughout the 1970s and ‘80s. They each attended the Western Pool & Spa Show in Southern California and believed that such a show — devoted primarily to

1st P.I.E. Committee. 1986. Don pictured front left.

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the education and training of pool and spa service technicians — would do well in Northern California.

Along with other volunteers, they helped establish Pool Industry Expo, which will stage its 38th show in September, 2025, in Monterey, Calif. Doug Tanner died in 1993. Don continued on as a show director for another nine years.

Anyone who ever attended a P.I.E. show when Don was involved would recognize the sound of his voice over the P.A. system. With perhaps 500 people present on the show floor, he would announce the day’s attendance at somewhere around 150 thousand.

Once, decked out in a wig and moustache reminiscent of Albert Einstein, he conducted a P.I.E. seminar on pool care in which he provided nothing but incorrect information. He told me later that he hoped no one who attended the class took him seriously.

Along with my late wife, Janice, I took a short vacation in the Napa Valley with Don and Roberta in the early ‘90s. During that trip, Don and I developed a comedy and magic routine that we performed on at least four occasions.

In it, Don portrayed an ignorant pool service tech who did absolutely everything wrong. I got to be his straight man, and he really taught me the elements of timing that made him a great comedian. Then we switched roles, and he played my bumbling assistant while I got to do a few magic tricks.

We incorporated our routine into seminars on running and promoting a pool service business, which we presented at pool shows in San Antonio, New Orleans, and Orlando. We visited an island in the Bahamas, and we co-hosted the IPSSA installation. We were also charter members of a group known as the Pool Industry Scotch Society, which gave us a chance to hang out with other industry friends while imbibing some very fine whisky. The last time I saw Don, it was at a P.I.S.S. party in Monterey.

Don’s “official” retirement occurred in 2000 — the same year that Roberta retired following 40 years as a teacher of mathematics. But he continued his involvement in the pool and spa industry for a few years more.

Once retired, Don and Roberta used their new-found freedom to travel throughout the world. By Roberta’s count, they visited 110 different countries together. Don became a skilled photographer and, combined with his writing talent, produced a series of travel books documenting a number of their overseas trips. He even presented one of his travel adventures for the Explorers’ Club of San Francisco.

Two years ago, Don and Roberta sold their San Rafael home and moved to a retirement community in Santa Rosa. Not content to just sit around and do nothing, Don started a play readers’group that attracted audiences from throughout their community.

Don and Roberta had two daughters, Debbie and Darcy, three granddaughters and three greatgrandsons. Roberta and the two girls were with Don when he died peacefully at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco, less than two months after he had been diagnosed with cancer.

During the 37 years that I knew him, Don and I engaged in dozens of conversations. It was not unusual to get a random call from him on a weekday afternoon, with no purpose other than to stay connected.

When he would say something particularly clever, he would often admonish me to write it down, “because you may want to include it in my obituary someday.”

I wish I had. Because Don Koss was the funniest guy I ever knew, and I wish I had some of his words to cheer me up right now.

I could really use them.

Don Koss — Husband, Father and Friend. We will miss you very much.

Don Koss in the Coachmen 1959