Hundreds celebrate life of late Daily Pilot columnist, community volunteer Jim de Boom
A high school picture of Jim de Boom adorns a memorial table next to his favorite Cracker Jacks snack during his celebration of life at the Balboa Pavilion on Wednesday.
More than 250 friends, family members and community leaders gathered in Newport Beach on Wednesday to celebrate the life of Jim de Boom, a longtime Daily Pilot columnist, event planner, community volunteer and former school board member.
De Boom died Feb. 29 at his Palm Desert home of complications related to brain seizures. He was 74.
The celebration of his life, held in the Balboa Pavilion’s grand ballroom overlooking Newport Harbor, included mementos of one of his favorites: the Angels baseball team. Tables were stocked with Cracker Jack and peanuts.
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Jim de Boom’s family including Jodi and Zach Drysdale, Barbara de Boom, and Stacy and Kyle Howard, back row, and the grandkids, Parker, Bailey, Kaitlyn, and Garrett during his celebration of life at the Balboa Pavilion on Wednesday.
De Boom was born in 1941 in St. Louis Park, Minn., where he also was raised. He graduated from George Williams College in Chicago and USC, later becoming a licensed marriage, family and child counselor.
In the Newport Beach-Costa Mesa community, he worked for the YMCA and served on the Newport-Mesa Unified School District board from 1983 to 1996.
He also was executive director of the Newport-Mesa-Irvine Interfaith Council and was active in the Rotary Club of Newport-Balboa, which recognized him this year with the Lifetime Honorary Rotarian award.
De Boom and his wife, Barbara, also ran an event-planning business.
A 1992 Daily Pilot column on display during his service, titled “De Booms always do a bang-up job,” touted the couple as a dynamic duo who got things done. They were possibly the most “effective married team in Orange County,” wrote Jim Felton, and instead of having a big staff, they used only a “word processor, two fax machines, a photocopier, four telephones and a dog-eared Rolodex.”
Beginning in the early 1990s, Jim de Boom wrote the Daily Pilot’s Community and Clubs column, which recognized area service clubs and volunteers.
It was a full house during the Jim de Boom celebration of life at the Balboa Pavilion on Wednesday.
Former Pilot Publisher Tom Johnson noted how de Boom was a particularly good resource for the newsroom through his extensive Newport-Mesa contacts and story ideas.
De Boom knew everyone, Johnson said.
“Jim was one of our greatest sources ever at the Daily Pilot,” he said. “If something happened in town, we would see him come up into our building’s second story, into Editorial, in his khakis and his blue, button-down Oxford shirt. Coming across the room, he’d say, ‘Here’s something you guys should check out.’ ... We found some of the greatest stories that way.”
Lane Calvert worked with de Boom at the Newport-Mesa-Irvine Interfaith Council, among other ventures.
“He looked at the good in everybody,” Calvert said. “Everybody was equal to Jim. He was my mentor.”
Stacy de Boom-Howard, one of de Boom’s daughters, said her father “lived his life serving for others and he never asked for recognition. He just did everything he could to make things better for everyone else.”
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Bradley Zint, bradley.zint@latimes.com
Twitter: @BradleyZint
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