Thelma Jean Boehne

Thelma Jean Boehne, 95, of Fort Thomas, Kentucky, died peacefully at home on June 9.
Although her servant’s heart has now stopped beating, her legacy of devotion to family, church, and the community lives on.

“I would like to be remembered as kind and good,” she said in a video interview more than 20 years ago.

Thelma was born at home – before the doctor arrived – on August 13, 1930 near Grant’s Lick, KY. She grew up in a farming family in the early days of the Great Depression. In one of her favorite old photographs, Thelma and her older sister, Rosalee, are standing outside the farmhouse in winter coats that clearly had been mended and patched many times over. A wooly young lamb, who the girls had adopted as a playmate, appears to be the warmest one in the picture.

Inside the house, there was no electricity, telephone or toilet. “We didn’t have an indoor bathroom. We had a path” (to the outhouse), she said.

Teamwork was learned early. The whole family – including Thelma, Rosalee and their little sister Linda Ruth – bailed hay, hoed the garden, fed chickens, milked cows and tended to the cash crop, tobacco, which provided most of the family’s monetary return.

When she was six, the one-room schools in the area closed and the students, including first-grader Thelma, reported to the brand-new Grant’s Lick Elementary school. She later graduated from Campbell County High School in the class of 1948. A group of friends from her graduating class continues to meet for lunch once a month. The group has naturally shrunk over the years.

Thelma last attended the now-small gathering a few weeks before her passing.
Following high school, she finished one year at Georgetown College (KY) so she could be a teacher. She taught first grade for several years at Grant’s Lick Elementary and then taught kindergarten for a year at the former Park Avenue School in Newport, KY.

She met her husband of 65 years, Albert Boehne, a World War II veteran, at an event near the farms where their families lived in Northern Kentucky. After dating for most of a year, Al offered Thelma an engagement ring while sitting in a car outside a Frisch’s restaurant.

They married on a blistering hot day in June of 1954 at Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church and then moved to Fort Thomas, KY, to be closer to the factory where Al worked in Norwood, OH. He died in early 2020.

“We lead a quiet life,” she once said of her marriage. “We don’t carouse.”

Thelma and Al had two children, Rich born in 1956 and Mary in 1959. Thelma worked at home to raise them until the early 1970s when she returned to education as a teaching assistant at Woodfill Elementary School in Fort Thomas. She served the students there for 19 years before retirement. Along the way, she was twice Woodfill’s PTA president and held numerous volunteer roles at the school.

Her five grandchildren benefitted from her teacherly ways. Many games at her house were deceptively educational. The books she read to them – and they later read to her – are now well-worn but still being enjoyed by the next generation.

“I hope they all turn out to be good citizens,” she said of her grandchildren in the 2002 interview. Her hopes were realized as they became adults and the parents of her great-grandchildren.

From 1954 until her death, she was a dedicated member of First Baptist Church of Fort Thomas. From the choir to the kitchen and everywhere in between, she served as an eager and organized worker among the flock. For years in retirement, she also volunteered at the Baptist Life retirement community and nursing home in Newport, KY, and later at a new facility, The Seasons, in Alexandria, KY.

Having been raised on a farm, she appreciated all good things that rise from the warm ground each spring. Late in life and battling cancer, her doctor asked her what she hoped to do in the approaching summer after recovering from surgery. “I want to get down on my knees,” she said, “and get my hands in the dirt.” She did, and did again in the next few summers before her body could do no more.

In addition to her husband, Al, she was preceded in death by her parents, Chester Ralph and Ruby Grace Moore; her sister Rosalee (Alan) Nagel; her niece Jean (Roger) Lillie; her nephew George (Cheryl) Torline; and her great-granddaughter Lola Patitucci.

She is survived by her sister Linda Ruth (Gary) Belcher; daughter Mary (Tim) Slaughter; son Rich (Lisa Graybeal) Boehne; grandchildren Alison (Mike) Patitucci; Kate (Daniel) Trotier; Kelly (Jarrod) Williams; Luke (Courtney Codina) Boehne; and Jacob (Adalia Powell) Boehne; and five great-grandchildren Adelaide, Elijah, Mallory, Sloane, and Sophia; plus numerous nieces and nephews.

Visitation will be from 10:30 until noon on Monday, June 15, at Dobbling Funeral Home, 106 S. Fort Thomas Avenue, Ft. Thomas, KY 41075. A service will begin at noon at the funeral home, followed by burial at Evergreen Cemetery, Southgate KY. Memorial contributions may be made to St. Elizabeth Hospice, 483 South Look Drive, Edgewood, KY 41017, or First Baptist Church of Ft. Thomas, 600 N. Ft. Thomas Avenue, KY 41075. Online condolences at www.dmefuneral.com.