JIM DE BOOM -- Community & Clubs

I missed Thursday’s Goofoffers Reunion and Friday’s National Day of

Prayer Breakfast. I write this from St. Louis Park, Minn., where my

father died Monday at the age of 92.

I caught a flight from LAX at 5 p.m. Monday to help my brother with

funeral arrangements. Dad had been in a convalescent home since his colon

cancer surgery in mid-January and never fully recovered.

My wife Barbara and daughters Stacy and Jodi are here for the services,

which were held Friday.

What great memories I have of Dad. He never belonged to a service club,

but it is from him that I learned of service. He helped our church,

Aldersgate United Methodist, sponsor refugees from Cuba and the Baltic

states, and their families, to settle in St. Louis Park.

As a young father, he started and served as the leader of a Cub Scouts

pack and a Boy Scouts troop, retiring from the Boy Scouts at the age of

88. He served as a Sunday school teacher and as superintendent of the

Sunday school at Aldersgate. For 20 years, he chaired the church’s blood

bank.

He had one job in his life, that of a credit manager of an artificial

limb company in Minneapolis. That’s where he got the brace for his badly

deformed leg, which was crippled by polio when he was a youngster.

Polio didn’t stop him from being a successful businessman, family man and

church and Scout leader. I remember our Sunday afternoon family drives,

the weekends at the family cabin at Lake Ida, Minn., the trips to visit

his brothers and sisters on their farms in Iowa.

At the de Boom family reunions, he was the hit of the day when he made

hats out of newspapers or led the gathering in any number of games, skits

and tricks. His nieces, nephews, and grandnieces and grandnephews would

always crowd around him for the next story.

My brother LeRoy graduated from high school in 1952 and had accepted a

scholarship to Harvard. But when he got polio a couple weeks before

departing for the East Coast, Dad was a man of encouragement when we were

all discouraged.

While LeRoy spent what seemed like years in Sister Kenny Institute in

Minneapolis, Dad was finishing off the attic so I would have a room,

since I wouldn’t be sharing a bedroom with LeRoy anymore.

When LeRoy enrolled at the University of Minnesota, Dad would come home

during the day, lift LeRoy into the car and drive him to the university

with Mom so LeRoy could attend classes.

Despite his disability, LeRoy received his associate’s degree and became

an accountant.

Mom and Dad provided LeRoy with daily assistance, and then LeRoy looked

after them, their health and finances. LeRoy still lives in the family

home of some 50 years.

Dad would say the best birthday gift he ever received was his

granddaughter Jodi, born on his 70th birthday. When anyone would ask Dad

his age in recent years, it was always the same age as Jodi.

Stacy and Jodi will always remember the visits to St. Louis Park and the

walks with Grandpa to the local playground park, learning how to chew

sunflower seeds and pump on the swings.

Dad had a good life and I, along with LeRoy and literally hundreds of

others -- including many former Boys Scouts, now adults -- are better for

having been touched by his life.

SERVICE CLUB MEETINGS THIS COMING WEEK:

TUESDAY

7:30 a.m. -- The Newport Beach Sunrise Rotary Club meets at the Balboa

Bay Club

6:30 p.m. -- The Costa Mesa-Newport Harbor Lions Club will meet at the

Costa Mesa Golf and Country Club.

WEDNESDAY

7:15 a.m. -- The South Coast Metro Rotary Club will meet at the Center

Club; the Newport Harbor Kiwanis Club meets at the University Athletic

Club.

Noon -- The Exchange Club of Orange Coast meets at the Bahia Corinthian

Yacht Club.

6 p.m. -- The Newport Balboa Rotary meets at the Bahia Corinthian Yacht.

THURSDAY

7:15 a.m. -- The Costa Mesa Orange Coast Breakfast Lions Club meets at

Mimi’s Cafe.

Noon -- Kiwanis Club of Newport Beach-Corona del Mar meets at the Bahia

Corinthian Yacht; the Costa Mesa Kiwanis Club meets at the Holiday Inn;

the Exchange Club of Newport Harbor meets at the Riverboat Restaurant;

the Newport-Irvine Rotary Club meets at the Irvine Marriott Hotel.

* COMMUNITY & CLUBS is published every Saturday in the Daily Pilot. Send

your service club’s meeting information by fax to (949) 660-8667, e-mail

to o7 jdeboom@aol.comf7 or by mail to 2082 S.E. Bristol St., Suite

201, Newport Beach 92660-1740.