Memorial Service Saturday : Jack Boettner, Reporter Since Early 1950s, Dies

Jack Boettner, a reporter and sports announcer in Orange County since the early 1950s, died Thursday from complications of heart surgery, his family announced.

Boettner, 68, underwent multiple bypass surgery Nov. 6. While surgeons believed the operation had been a success, complications eventually put Boettner into a coma, according to his wife, Elaine.

Hospital support systems were gradually removed beginning Sunday, and he died at 2:30 p.m. Thursday, she said.

Joined Times in ’63

A memorial service is scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday at the Morningside Presbyterian Church, 1200 E. Dorothy Lane, Fullerton. The church, where Boettner was an elder, deacon and charter member, is two doors from his house.

The family asks that memorial contributions be made to the church.

The longest stint of Boettner’s journalism career was at The Times, which he joined in September, 1963. During the ensuing 20 1/2 years, Boettner covered many beats but concentrated on Anaheim and other north county cities.

After retiring from The Times in 1984, he joined Anaheim in its convention center marketing division, a position he held until his hospitalization last month.

Born in Rock Port, Mo., on Feb. 1, 1919, Boettner entered the Kansas City Art Institute to study fine art. But in December, 1940, before the first semester had concluded, Boettner’s Marine Corps reserve unit was activated, and he found himself stationed in San Diego and later on Peleliu, an island in the South Pacific.

He specialized in servicing aircraft, was promoted to master technical sergeant and was discharged in 1945.

By the time of his discharge, his interest had shifted from art to journalism. He enrolled in Woodbury University in Los Angeles, graduated in February, 1948, and three days later married Elaine Harlow of Santa Ana, the interior design student he had met in an English literature class.

He held jobs on newspapers in Temple City, Florence and South Gate--becoming editor of the latter--and briefly wrote news for Los Angeles TV station KTLA. In the early ‘50s he hired on as a reporter for the fledgling and now-defunct Orange County News Service.

In later years he wrote for the Santa Ana Register and was both reporter and sportscaster for Orange County radio station KWIZ, eventually doing play-by-play broadcasts from county high school and junior college football games.

During his tenure at The Times, he was also public address announcer at Anaheim Stadium during non-professional football games. His activities varied from serving as president of the Orange County chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, Sigma Delta Chi, to pitching for a Costa Mesa-based amateur softball team.

Boettner is survived by five sons and a daughter: Andrew, 35, of Newport Beach; Richard, 32, of Newport Beach; Keith, 31, of Anaheim; Kimberly Holmes, 29, of Orange; Bruce, 27, of Yorba Linda, and Jeffrey, 20, of Anaheim.