Boone Plans Bigger Role in KDOC : Festival: The singer, who is the grand marshal of today’s parade in Garden Grove, might even move to Orange County.

Singer Pat Boone, grand marshal of today’s 33rd annual Strawberry Festival parade in Garden Grove, says he hopes to be seeing a lot more of Orange County in the near future through greater involvement in his Anaheim television station, KDOC Channel 56, and a possible move out of Beverly Hills.

Among those who may be riding with him in the parade, Boone said in a telephone interview Friday, may be several of his grandchildren who live in Irvine with Boone’s daughter Lindy and her husband. (Boone said daughter Debby, who recently completed a starring run in “Meet Me in St. Louis” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, and her family have other plans for the weekend).

The grand marshal’s duties are not exactly daunting, he acknowledged: “All I do is what everyone else does in a parade--ride, wave and grin.”

Boone said he and his wife “could happily move to Orange County” and in fact have “been down on house-hunting forays . . . making some expeditions with real estate people.”

Apart from the proximity to family members, the main reason for the move would be to become more active as a producer at KDOC, of which he is president and major stockholder. Until now, Boone said, he only came down for station board meetings and “occasionally for a special program.”

The station, Boone said, is “doing very well financially,” but he has “a good dozen programming ideas I would like to launch” at the station, which would require him to live nearby. These include: a morning show he would host from local restaurants, a cross between “AM Los Angeles” and the old “Don McNeil Breakfast Club”; “The Dornan Report,” hosted by Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), and an afternoon teen-music show from Disneyland or Knott’s Berry Farm.

Boone’s latest project is serving as “ambassador without portfolio and spokesman for Israel tourism to the Christian community.”

The contract, announced during the height of the Persian Gulf crisis, caused Boone to cancel three concert dates in Indonesia during a Far Eastern tour for security reasons, in what he called “one of the hardest decisions I ever made in my life.”

The announcement of the tourism job got extraordinary play in the world media, he said, “probably because it was such an odd item juxtaposed against the war news.”

Boone, on his weekly contemporary Christian music radio show, which is syndicated in 200 markets in the United States, urges evangelicals to visit the Jewish state. Listeners are urged to call an 800 number for a packet containing a map, poster and informational material regarding tours.

Under the slogan “I feel closer to the Lord when I visit the land he called home,” Boone also appears in full-page ads in Christian magazines such as Charisma.

Next up are television spots in June and a November tour for 500 people that Boone would lead, following up on more than half a dozen previous visits to Israel, including one to entertain Israeli soldiers in occupied Syria.

One stop on the proposed tour: a Christian-operated medical clinic in the Old City of Jerusalem. The clinic, staffed by Israeli and Arab doctors, treats Palestinian children. Boone called the Spafford Clinic a “microcosm, where people of goodwill who have honest differences put aside those differences to address human needs in the spirit of brotherhood and humanity.”