Harold Bohr

Obituary of Harold Bohr as told by his granddaughter, Carlyn Wall This is the story of my grandfather, Harold Bohr. He has dedicated his life to helping others. Missing from this account are countless stories of his exciting time with the Amazon Indians living in the jungle, stories of having to adapt to new cultures and learning a new language in the midst of a violent communist revolution. Stories of the times that they went to church knowing that angry mobs were lighting vehicles on fire and that there were gunfights all around the city of Caracas. He has always been there for his congregation no matter what. My grandfather has always had great faith and trust in the Lord and has been a pillar of strength for his family. He has accomplished many great things in his life. I love my grandpa. He is a wonderful man. Harold Bohr, my grandfather, was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1923 and grew up in a staunch German household. He was an extraordinary man who dedicated his life to the service of God while making great sacrifices for his family. What follows is the life story of this fascinating man. My grandfather’s dad was born in Germany in 1894 and immigrated to America as a young man. He was not an educated man, but he was a hard-working middle class American who was able to own his own home. He worked in the car manufacturing business as a laborer. He met and married my great-grandmother whose family had also emigrated from Germany and they settled down in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was the time of the prohibition and my great-grandparents told of how they made their own “moonshine” out in the back shed behind their house to make some extra money. My great-grandfather was a rough man, strong-willed, bull-headed and very prejudiced against the “niggers” as he called them. He swore, smoked and spent his weekends in a drunken stupor in the neighborhood bars. He supported his family but was not a model father or husband. As my grandfather tells it, all that changed when he was 12 years old. One day my great-grandfather stumbled upon a big tent where an evangelistic crusade was being held and after a matter of a few weeks he became a changed man. In my grandfather’s words, “My father didn’t teach me anything up until the age of 12. He was a drunk and had a violent temper, but once he became a Christian, he totally changed.” My grandfather recalls that his dad no longer spent his weekend in bars, but became a God-fearing man, instilling in his two young sons the knowledge of God. Preaching the gospel became of utmost importance to him and he conducted family worship and began to attend church and became a member of the Seventh-day Adventist church. It was this miraculous change in his father that influenced my grandfather to become a minister. My grandfather spent all of his early years in Milwaukee. He only had one brother who was born a year and 5 months after him. Growing up, my grandfather didn’t have a lot of friends. He was timid and says that he associated mostly with kids in his neighborhood. He did not participate in sports because practices and games were held on Saturdays and they were Seventh-day Adventists and kept the Sabbath. He began to take violin lessons while in grade school and when he enrolled in high school his parents bought him his very own violin and he began to study with a professional teacher and eventually became the concert master of the school orchestra. He attended Custer High school and his favorite teacher was Mr. Boltz, his orchestra teacher. He tells of the first performance of the orchestra. It was to be held on a Friday night and he knew he could not perform because of his Sabbath observance so simply did not go. When he was asked to appear in the principal’s office on Monday morning, he was not surprised. He knew he was in trouble. He explained to the principal and Mr. Bolts that he could not attend Friday evening concerts because of his religious convictions. They pleaded with him to make an exception or they would have to drop him from the orchestra. He explained to them that he could not comprise his beliefs and that as much as he loved playing in the orchestra, he would have to drop out. They then did something totally unheard of at Custer High School. They changed all of the concert performances to Thursday evenings and as long as my grandfather was a student there they never had another Friday evening concert. This is but only one example of my grandfather’s unwavering faith. My grandfather’s family had a little cottage on a lake in upper Wisconsin and they would spend every summer there boating, fishing and swimming. Their dad would come up on weekend to fish with them. He says they were poor, but they didn’t feel poor because that was their way of life and they knew nothing different. My grandfather knew from an early age that he wanted to become a minister. At age 18 he left home to attend Emmanuel Missionary College, a private Seventh-day Adventist school in Berrien Springs, Michigan. He knew it would not be easy because private school was expensive, and he would have to work hard to make his dream a reality. His parents made great sacrifices to keep him in college and he worked 30 hours a week in the school paint factory and furniture assembly store to help pay for his tuition. He continued to play his violin and was a member of the college orchestra. My grandfather had to study and work hard so did not have a very active social life, but it was sometime during his junior year that he laid eyes on my grandmother and, as he puts it, “I was head over heels in love!” Dating was not allowed but they were able to sit on campus and in the cafeteria together and occasionally sneak a kiss. It was in the cafeteria that my grandmother seriously questioned the wisdom of dating my grandfather. It was customary to go through line and take small dishes of food which then were “dumped” on a large plate once at the table. My grandfather proceeded to do this while keeping his eyes fixed on my grandmother. To his dismay, he shortly realized that he had not overturned the large plate and all his food was on the bottom of the plate and overflowing on the table. “She almost broke up with me over that,” he now laughs. My grandfather graduated in May 1945 and began to practice the ministry in his first church in Merrill, Wisconsin. In September of that same year he married my grandmother in Flint, Michigan. My grandparents spent the early years of their marriage living in Wisconsin where my grandfather pastored several churches and my mother and her brother, Stephen, were born. In 1954 they received an invitation to be missionaries in South America and they spent the next 24 years in mission service. According to my grandfather, the years spent in the mission field were difficult but fulfilling. They had to sacrifice to make ends meet but they were happy. They began this great adventure in Colombia. They spoke no Spanish, had two small children and my grandmother was expecting her third child. Living in Colombia was very different from the serenity and security of the Wisconsin countryside. They didn’t speak the language and the intense poverty was shocking. That first year was an extremely difficult one and they often wondered if they had made the right decision. They had been in Colombia only a few short months when they went through one of their most terrifying experiences. Their dog and little four-year-old son, my uncle, were bitten by a stray dog that tested positive for rabies and the entire family had to go through a series of shots in the abdomen. The difficulty communicating because of the language barrier and the slow pace in which things moved made it an extremely trying experience. In 1955 they moved to Venezuela and shortly thereafter their fourth child was born. My grandfather worked in Venezuela for the next 10 years—two years as President of the West Venezuelan Mission and eight years as President of the East Venezuelan Mission with the headquarters in Caracas, the capital city. As president he directed the work of the Seventh-day Adventist church and had to travel extensively throughout the country which required him to be gone for weeks at a time. My grandmother was left with the responsibility of caring for the four children and running the household during his absences. It was difficult, but she knew he was doing the Lord’s work. He conducted many baptisms often preaching in small towns and baptizing in rivers. During that time he made several trips down to the southern region of Venezuela to visit the Davis Indians, a Seventh-day Adventist Indian tribe. The area was accessible only by a one-motor plane landing on a dirt runway in the middle of the jungle. It was during one of those trips that his father died, and they were not able to reach him to give him the news until the funeral had already taken place. It was one of the very sad experiences he went through being so far away. When my grandfather moved to Venezuela, the anti-American sentiment was strong as evidenced by the graffiti sprayed on walls and bridges— “Yankee, Go Home!” He remembers that when President Nixon visited the country he was spit on and rocks were thrown at his motorcade. It could be scary at times with the communist party attempting to take control of the country and the riots and burning of cars and buses was a common occurrence. However, my grandfather was very respected and loved among the people he worked with and most of the time they felt very welcome. Trust in God and love of family was a very large part of their lives and kept them grounded and eventually the Latin people and culture became like home. There were no racial lines, no awareness of black and white. “The lessons I learned there, the respect I developed for other cultures and the time spent with family can never be replaced” said my grandfather. It was during those years in Venezuela that my grandfather achieved what he considers his greatest accomplishment. The Seventh-day Adventist church has the largest parochial school system in the world after the Catholics but there was no Seventh-day Adventist high school in Venezuela and my grandfather had always been a firm believer in Christian education—so much so that he had sent his two older children, with enormous sacrifice, to the United States to study in a Christian school. He had a passion to establish a Christian school for Seventh-day Adventist young people but his vision ran into constant roadblocks because the cost was prohibitive, they had no land and the church membership was relatively poor. However, as my grandfather puts it, “With God, all things are possible,” and so the vision became a reality. My grandfather, along with the mission treasurer, began the search for land and finally at the beginning of 1963, following a lead, they found a beautiful valley located in the center of Venezuela. My grandfather made it his mission to raise money for the school and over the course of the next two years raised over one million dollars from private and government corporations. He became close friends with George Hall, vice-president of the Standard Oil Corporation, and that business was a large contributor to the school. Other oil companies including Shell, Texaco and Mobil contributed as did the Chrysler Corporation. INSTIVOC opened a couple years later with around 160 students and today is a full-fledged Seventh-day Adventist university and seminary. My grandfather was notified at the 50-year anniversary that they were naming a 1000 seat auditorium in his honor. In 1965 my grandfather returned to the United States to attend Andrews University in Michigan and received his Master’s Degree. It was the same college he had graduated from in 1945 but it had been renamed. He then returned with my grandmother and their two younger daughters to Venezuela to teach at the new school. He taught Bible three days a week and continued to raise money for the school the other two days. When the new cafeteria was completed, it was named after Mr. Hall as the entire project was funded by the Standard Oil Corporation and Mr. Hall attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony as the guest of honor. In 1969 they returned to Medellin, Colombia—the very first city they had arrived in back in 1954 and my grandfather taught theology at the Seventh-day Adventist College there. They remained in Colombia until 1971 and then returned once again to the Andrews University Theological Seminary where my grandfather received his Master of Divinity. A year later they moved to Chicago where my grandfather spent the next four years as pastor of the North Shore Seventh-day Adventist Church. He enjoyed his time there very much. His children and grandchildren were close by and they were able to spend a lot more family time together. They lived in a lovely parsonage about two blocks from church and my grandfather’s mother came to live with them along with a Marmoset monkey which they had brought back from Colombia. In 1976 my grandfather was faced with a decision. He had been accepted into the Doctoral program at Andrew’s University and he had also received a call to teach Theology at River Plate College in Argentina. He says it didn’t take him too long to make up his mind and a few months later he was in Argentina teaching Systematic Theology in the seminary and my grandmother was teaching English. Only their youngest daughter accompanied them because all of the older children had married. He loved his years in Argentina and while there they had the opportunity to travel quite a bit including to the Iguazu Falls on the border with Brazil. Since they were in the Southern Hemisphere the seasons were switched and the summer months were cold. Most of the homes and buildings didn’t have heating systems and he recalls wearing his coat while teaching his classes and using space heaters and a fireplace to keep the house warm. My grandfather spent five years in Argentina and in 1981 they decided to return to the United States on permanent return. It was in Amarillo, Texas, where my grandfather spent the last seven years of his active ministry as pastor of the Amarillo Seventh-day Adventist church. They bought their very first home and settled into what my grandfather loved best--preaching the gospel. Both he and my grandmother also volunteered to teach at the church school. My great-grandmother once again came to live with them and they were able to travel and spend time with their children and grandchildren. My grandfather once again had a vision and this time it was to start a Spanish church in Amarillo. It began with a handful of members in a rented building and today they have a beautiful church with over 350 members. My grandfather, now totally fluent in the Spanish language, contributed greatly to the Spanish work in Amarillo. In 1988, after almost 45 years of church ministry, my grandfather decided to retire. They now had the freedom to travel and, as my grandfather put it, “Play golf at least one to two times a week!” He also built a greenhouse in his backyard and spent considerable time working on his garden. A year after retirement he was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma. He looked at it as a setback but did not let it overtake his life. He went through treatment and went into remission. He continued to be invited to preach and also traveled to camp meetings as a guest speaker. In 1991 he and my grandmother had the opportunity to travel to Israel with a large group of friends—something they had always dreamed of doing. They were able to trace so many places where Jesus walked and it was a wonderful experience for both of them. In 1995 they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. All four of their children and all of their grandchildren threw a big party and it was attended by many, many friends. Many stories were told about my grandfather and a good time was had by all. A couple days later they left for a much-anticipated trip to Canadian Rockies. My grandfather’s mother died in 1998—3 months short of her hundredth birthday. Many years went by with my grandfather keeping busy but enjoying retirement. By 2005 the children decided the time had come to have my grandparents move closer to one of them because my grandmother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and it was increasingly more difficult for my grandfather to care for her on his own. At the same time he had increasing loss of feeling in his legs as a result of the Thalidomide he had been taking for his Multiple Myeloma so the decision was made to have them move closer to their oldest daughter, my mother, who lived in Oklahoma City. Fortunately, there was a Seventh-day Adventist retirement village just 30 minutes outside of Oklahoma City. It was the perfect place for my grandparents. Arrangements were made for them to buy a small duplex apartment and they were able to sell their house in Amarillo within weeks to a neighbor who lived across the street. My grandmother continued to deteriorate until she passed away in December 2008 leaving my grandfather without “the love of my life” as he often comments. But he also adds that he “will see her again in heaven and longs for that day.” My grandpa had many friends in the retirement village and enjoyed the many social activities that were provided there. Other than a mini-stroke that he suffered in 2007 he was in good health and had been cancer free for many years. He no longer was able to play golf but walked as much as 2 miles a week with the aid of his walker. Reading was his greatest joy and had read the Bible completely through 38 times since his retirement. His daughter and son-in-law spent time with him taking him shopping, to doctor’s appointments and on some trips. He was able to return to Amarillo and visit the Spanish church that he had founded many years ago. He also traveled to Atlanta for the worldwide conference of Seventh-day Adventists which is held every four years. There were over 70,000 people there and he reconnected with several friends that he had worked with down in Venezuela years earlier. His was very proud of his son who also is a Seventh-day Adventist minister and, much to his joy, he was able to watch him on the 3ABN Christian network several times a week. He watched with interest the current events taking place in our world and felt that the natural disasters, wars, sickness and moral decline were an indication that Jesus is coming soon. He looked back over the years he served in the mission field as the best years of his life and often reminisced about those days. I asked him what advice he would have for today’s generation and he thoughtfully replied, “Be serious about the way you live and trust in God and allow him to guide you.” Addendum In 2014 my grandpa and his sweet little next-door neighbor fell in love and were married. They spent a little over two years together before Alice succumbed to illness and passed away.