Anthonius "Tony" Johannes Josephus Bosboom

Tony Bosboom was the 13th of 14 children of Johannes Antonius Bosboom and Geertruida Maria van Everdingen, and the last to pass away. Tony’s life might have been that of a professional and family man in The Netherlands, like so many of his and the next generation of the family. Events took him on another path when Nazi Germany took control of The Netherlands in the early 1940s, just after Tony began college. Tony along with his mother and eight of his brothers and sisters, survived the war living in Utrecht. Immediately after the war Tony joined the reconstituted Dutch army instead of returning to college. He served for ten years as an artillery officer as The Netherlands rebuilt, eventually rising to the rank of captain.

Life took another eventful turn when the Dutch army posted Tony to Jakarta, in Indonesia, in the late 1940s, as part of the process of Dutch decolonization and Indonesian independence. Training the nascent Indonesian army by day and socializing with a lively international community by night, Tony met a lovely and vivacious young woman from Tillamook, Oregon, May Marie Newman, a secretary in the U.S. Foreign Service. Married on April 19, 1952 in Jakarta, Tony and Marie were together for 47 lively and loving years until her death in 1999.

Tony and Marie made their way back to Holland in 1953, after a many-month odyssey via the United States to see his new bride’s home and meet her family. They sailed to the US on the USS President Cleveland, stopping in Hong Kong, The Philippines, Tokyo and Hawaii along the way. Former President Truman and his family joined the ship in Hawaii, and Tony actually played poker with Pres. Truman on the journey, which says so much about both Tony and Truman. They sailed under the Golden Gate into San Francisco, and then made their way to Portland, meeting Marie’s family and traveling Oregon and the Northwest, including a side-trip to Victoria. They took a train to the east coast and spent time in New York City and Washington DC, before taking ship on the Holland American lines back to Amsterdam. And thus began a lifetime love of extensive travel.

Tony and Marie lived in The Netherlands for four years, while he continued to serve in the army. Among other things, Tony twice skated the Elfstedentocht (in 1954 and 1956), the famous 200 km, eleven-city tour on the rivers and canals of Friesland in the north of The Netherlands. In 1956, as Marie was carrying their first child, she wanted to return to her home. Tony was game for a new adventure, and so he retired from the army and it was off to Portland, Tony’s home for the rest of his life. Daughter Trudy (Gertrude Marie) was born in May 1957, and their second daughter Lisa (Elizabeth Faye) in 1961. Both survive Tony, as Trudy Shurts of Portland and Lisa Faye Walseth of Los Angeles.

Settling in Portland, Tony had to find a way in his new land, possessed mostly of enormous character, charisma, experience, intelligence, energy, and an entrepreneurial spirit. Working at Jantzen and seeing an unfilled niche in the fabric business, Tony and Marie in 1968 founded what would become Fabricland, building the company to 92 stores across the west before selling the company in 1990. One giant fabric store rather than many small ones had always intrigued Tony, and so he and Marie opened Fabric Depot in east Portland in 1992, when Tony was already 69. He loved the business, he loved the colors and feel of fabric, he loved the customers, he loved the vendors and suppliers, and he loved his employees, many of them with him for decades. Fabric Depot itself is one of the many legacies of Tony, and lives on in the family. During all these years, Tony lived a larger-than-life life with Marie and their family, immediate and extended -- a fast-paced love of friends, food, entertaining, parties, gaming, business, golf, and travel for business and family and fun, with several trips per year to The Netherlands to visit the family that would then branch off to every corner of Europe, and a special love of Paris.

Tony retired from active work in the early 2000s, not long after Marie passed away. He later moved for health reasons to the senior living facility of Clare Bridge in Troutdale, where he lived contentedly for nearly ten years in a wonderful community of amazing caregivers. Tony is survived by his two daughters; their husbands, John Shurts and James Dustin Walseth; granddaughters Elaine Love and husband Jon Love of Portland, Kim Baudry and husband Clément Baudry of Paris, and Anna Parry of New York City; and one great-granddaughter, Olivia Michele Marie Baudry in Paris. He is also survived by an extended family numbering in the hundreds around the world -- Tony was also the beloved Uncle Tony or Oom Ton to thirty four nieces and nephews. His grandson-in-law Jon captured Tony’s life, spirit and legacy well:

“I met Tony Bosboom in the twilight of his life, and was thus deprived of the chance to make a personal connection. Nevertheless I feel like I knew him: through his granddaughter Elaine and his daughter Trudy in whom he engrained ideas of family and love that improve my life daily; through the business he built and rebuilt with his hands and mind that has endured for nearly a quarter century, and the employees who were with him and loved him to the end; through the family that loved him and has embraced me as one of their own. I've come to know Tony in arguably the most meaningful and truthful of ways-- through the impact his life had on the world. Tony Bosboom, I knew you little and yet know you well, and you will be missed. Rest, finally, in peace.”

Tony’s funeral service will be on July 8 at 11 am at St. Therese Catholic Church, 1260 NE 132nd Ave in Portland; rosary will be recited at 10:00am. Burial afterwards at the Forest Lawn cemetery in Gresham. Visitation on July 7 from 1pm-6pm at the Bateman Carroll Funeral Home, 520 W Powell Blvd in Gresham. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Providence Portland Medical Foundation, http://oregon.providence.org/our-services/p/providence-portland-medical-foundation/.