LB Janitor keeps track of towels and students belongings'

Tom Bohmker thought he was dying. At 60 years old he had been struck with paralysis and was flat in his bed. He thought a lot about leaving. Sometimes he even wanted to. But there was one thing that worried him very much about the idea. His wife's dream house. He hadn't finished it yet.

Bohmker is the equipment coordinator at LBCC's Activity Center. The whole place needs his work to keep things running smoothly. But now he was sick.

Seven years ago James Bell hired him for the post of athletic equipment coordinator. He said  he was the most qualified man that applied. "He had the skills to fix things, the positive attitude...and the desire to help the teaching/learning done in the AC."

Tom does even more than that. All we see when we walk by his office is Tom puttering around the roaring washing machines. We recognize the perpetual jean shirt with the stains washed into it, the smile that stretches his bony brown face as he tries to remember your name. But we can't see around the corner to where the hidden office is.

The little room floats in the smell of cleaning solutions; it's tidy, with labels on the cabinets of supplies. Some jokester put up a picture of "Tom's dream commuter pickup," a huge dump truck. A history in two volumes of Stonewall Jackson is propped up on a shelf. And on one of the closets there, slightly crooked, hangs a picture of a woman and her two girls. She was a former work-study student. Her daughter is very sick. Bohmker is worried about her.

He also tells the story about Tim. He's very proud of Tim.

Tim was a student that no one else would have been proud of. Out of high school he had dragged around watching video games until signing up to do work-study at LBCC. Tom said he tried. But Tim's work wasn't quite good enough. He had to stop. Still Bohmker said with pride that Tim had made "A start on life." He is now in the Navy as a succesful chef.

One of his workers lived in a homeless shelter. Bohmker said it was a terrible place.  That was another student he was proud of.

It's all about the students. He said that the "pleasure of his job is to serve students." He rotates around them.

Bell said that Bohmker has "a heart of gold, he's not mean." The students who work under him agree. Susan Erwin, who's on her second term as a work-study student said that "there is nothing I'd change" about Bohmker. Kecia Speck, also in work-study said the same thing. "I love working with him...he genuinely cares about the people working here."

Bohmker  had to think a long time to decide what he didn't like about his job. Finally he decided it was the "domino effect," when so many things piled up at once. The roof is leaking and a teacher has come in for a tool but over at the gym the basketball holder is broken while a student is asking for help opening her locker and the baseball field needs to be cleaned up...

We all know of course that in that paralysis attack Bohmker didn't die. He recovered, even though he had to spend some time in a nursing home. Not a very cheerful place, but he said that "We pretended we were at a very distinguished country club."

He's been given more time. The dream house is almost done. 

Bohmker was brought up in San Fransisco in what he called a "functional" family. His mother didn't work. His father was a Navy man. He taught them to call right starboard, left port, and to keep at a hard job until they finished it.

After earning a degree in aircraft technology, Bohmker moved to Oregon at 21 years old.

It's here that he met his wife. "We're very compatible," said Rosie Bohmker.

Of course there was that time when they had only been married five years. Tom Bohmker wanted to buy a Station Wagon for more room. She objected, strongly. It was dark green and a Dodge. "I was young," she said laughing, "and it looked too much like a hearse." Besides, Bohmker was going to sell her loved powder-blue car to help find the money. When they went to the bank for  the cash, she drove off on him. Left him stranded.

"He called his mother," she said. "I understand his reasons now." Bohmker bought her a teapot full of flowers to make it up.

Now he's here, busy fixing things and finding lost watches. He pans gold and writes what he said are "technical publications" about his hobby.  Just recently he sold a story to the Prospecting and Mining Journal. Sometimes he daydreams about his projects, but sweeps the floor at the same time. 

 Because as he said, "Somebody has to do it."

Tom Bohmker 

Age: 62                                      

Family: wife Rosie, two boys and two grandchildren

Interests: panning for gold, hobby farm, writing "technical publications," fixing things

Former jobs: logging, woodcutting, working in the metallurgy department, custodial work, mining industry, airplane mechanic, construction