John David Boenke
John D. Boenke was born in 1926 in Rossford, Ohio to immigrant parents (German and English), the youngest of five children. He grew up during the Great Depression and graduated from Rossford High School in 1944. At his graduation ceremony, as Salutatorian, he presented a speech entitled “A Knowledge Charter”.
In 1945 he enrolled in the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor but was drafted two weeks into the second semester and forced to leave school. He served in the U.S. Army in 1945-46 in the Medical Corps at Camp Campbell, Kentucky. After his discharge in April 1946 he returned to college, receiving his Bachelor of Science in Physics from the University of Michigan in 1951.
After college, John worked in research and engineering for the General Electric Company. During his early years with G.E. he was assigned to several different internships around the area in various departments. During an internship in Erie, PA, he met his wife, Mary Mueller, at a church singles group. When his next assignment sent him to Louisville, KY, he asked Mary to come with him. The couple was married in Erie in December 1954 and moved to Louisville where their first child was born the following year.
Later John was reassigned to the Cleveland area, where their next two children were born. In Cleveland, John worked in GE’s Glass division. His proudest achievement was creating a large glass mirror for a reflecting telescope installed at the Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, which involved fusing many blocks of very pure glass with a minimum of aberrations.
In the 1960’s, John and Mary successfully worked to racially integrate Cleveland Heights, despite death threats, neighborhood bombings and prowlers on the porch at 2am. It cost him his career after his employer saw him on the news at a civil rights rally. He was never promoted again. He decided it was time for a change.
In 1969 he moved the family to Dayton, Ohio for a job as Manager of an engineering test laboratory at the Lau Blower Company. When that company consolidated to Indiana in 1974, the family moved again to Warren, Ohio, where John took a job as Chief Engineer for Halsey Taylor Water Cooler Corp. When they also consolidated and moved away in 1976, he took a job as Senior Design Engineer for Werner Ladder Company. He remained especially proud of the engineering upgrade he designed for Werner which is still in use today.
While in Warren, John and Mary purchased 60 acres of land on California Road in Ashtabula County where John built a small family cabin. His engineering prowess came in handy as he single-handedly maneuvered the roof joists into place. Also on that land, John and Mary planted 200 evergreen seedlings which grew into a small forest and stood for decades.
John was always independent and finally decided he wanted to be his own boss. He and Mary moved to Ashtabula, Ohio, to purchase and operate the Cedars Motel. In later years he would say this was his favorite job. They were able to host a large extended-family reunion at the motel in 1988, dubbed “The Boenke Blast”. John was owner, operator, builder, repair man, carpenter, and front desk clerk. He received an award from the Ohio Motel Association for his work as president in 1981. John finally retired in 1989.
The next year, in search of a warmer climate, John and Mary moved to Hardy, Virginia, near Roanoke. They had fallen in love with the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Roanoke opera and symphony, and the Unitarian Universalis Church of Roanoke. As staunch Liberals, they were delighted that Virginia’s governor was Black and the Lt. Governor was female. They became active in the local Democratic Party.
Retirement did not mean sitting still. On their property in Hardy, John put in hiking trails, built a tree house and a garden shed, a small bridge across a dip in the hillside, a fire circle, and a large vegetable garden surrounded by a high fence in an attempt to keep the deer out.
In 2011, John and Mary downsized to a home closer in to groceries and doctors in Vinton, Virginia, on Deer Ridge Lane. For many years John loved walking three times a week along the nearby Greenway trail, sometimes as far as five miles to the Blue Ridge Parkway. He later became a “Mall Walker” at Valley View Mall, walking a hour-long loop inside the perimeter of the mall. Prior to COVID he began accompanying Mary to Lancerlot Sports Complex, walking on the indoor track there.
John served as treasurer of the Deer Ridge Lane homeowners’ association for a number of years. He started a Secular Humanists group at the UU church. He and Mary were active members of UUCR for the rest of their lives.
In his later years, John remained interested in reading and studying in the areas of Cosmology, Theoretical Physics and Philosophy. In addition, he had an interest in the origins of religion. He privately published around twenty books of short novels, short stories, and poetry. He stayed politically engaged and sent letters to the editor of the Roanoke Times. Reflecting over his life, John was proud of his civil rights activism and his engineering achievements.
As Mary’s Parkinson’s progressed, John took on cooking and household chores. After Mary’s death in 2023, John continued to be independent, driving his car and living in his own home until 2024 at the age of 98. He lived long enough to meet his first great-grandchild. His final days were spent comfortably at The Hermitage in Roanoke, where the staff took excellent care of him and he entertained them with his jokes and puns. All his life John loved a good pun, and plenty of bad ones.
John was predeceased by his wife of 68 years, Mary. He is survived by three children, Mark Boenke (Annie Wegener), Adrian Dee (Bernadette Janet), and Myra Boenke (William Haller), five grandchildren, Sylvie Boenke-Bowden (Eric Petersen), James Boenke-Bowden, Ellie Bowden (Jordan Garcia), Henry Haller, and Tim Haller, and two great grandchildren, William Petersen and Renee Petersen.
John’s and Mary’s ashes will be buried near his parents and brother at Fort Meigs Cemetery, Toledo, OH. The family invites donations in John’s honor to the Freedom From Religion Foundation https://secure.ffrf.org/forms/donation-form, or P.O. Box 750, Madison, WI 53701.
A celebration of John’s life based on instructions John wrote in 1998 will be held at the Unitarian Universal Church of Roanoke (2015 Grandin Road SW) on what would have been John’s 100th birthday, October 21, 2026, at 1PM. We will share three poems John wrote, his selection of music, and everyone is invited to share memories. All are welcome.
A website honoring John and sharing some of his poems and stories is being constructed at https://www.johnboenke.com/.
Arrangements by Simpson Funeral Home Peters Creek Chapel. (540) 366-0707.
