Clemens Stadium was a special place to Warren ‘Boz’ Bostrom.
It’s where the beloved accounting professor – and mentor and friend to so many Bennies and Johnnies – played college football as a lineman on the Johnnie football team.
It’s where he spent countless sun-splashed autumn afternoons watching practice, and where he jovially mingled on the field following Johnnie home games – congratulating players who were his students and those who weren’t with equal vigor.
It’s even the place he’d take his classes when weather was nice, shaking up the routine by getting outdoors.
So it was a fitting venue for his friends and family – and a wide swath of the CSB and SJU community – to gather Sunday (Oct. 19) and pay tribute to Bostrom, who passed away earlier this month at age 52 after battling illness.
“Boz loved this community,” CSB and SJU President Brian Bruess told the crowd, which filled the track in front of the podium and a good portion of the main grandstand on a sunny afternoon when the fall colors on the surrounding trees were finally beginning to show.
“He loved this stadium. And he loved each and every one of you. That was the thing about Boz. Even if you’d never met him, or had him in class, or were an advisee. Even if you didn’t know him well, he loved you all the same. Boz embodied a brand of enthusiastic love for students. A love for the Saint John’s and Saint Ben’s community. A love of life and of being everyone’s champion.”
Bruess spoke of how Boz has become a verb on campus – a way of trying to emulate the passion he had for teaching, and the joy he took in being there for his students.
That continued right until the end of his life as he continued to teach this semester even as his condition worsened.
“To ‘Boz it’ is to bring your best energy,” Bruess said. “To encourage with an unapologetic brand of love. When you Boz it, you show up with a smile. Bozing life is coming to teach your last class on a Monday morning in the very week that our loving God called Professor Boz home.”
Bostrom’s wife Kacey spoke of how her husband tried to get the most he could out of everyone he came in contact with.
“One of his strengths was being a maximizer,” Kacey said. “When he saw a spark in you, he would do all he could to fan that into a bonfire to benefit the community.”
Kacey asked that her husband be a continuing inspiration to the many he touched.
“So I hope that when you Boz it out in the world, that you hold your own worth and value in Christ’s eyes,” she said. “That you serve your neighbors, whomever or wherever they may be, to the best of your abilities.
“Boz it by elevating those around you to be their best selves.”
Among the other speakers Sunday were Boz’s friend and colleague Dr. Kari-Shane Davis Zimmerman, a professor of theology at CSB and SJU, and Ben Trnka ’11, who taught with Bostrom in the CSB and SJU accounting and finance department.
Trnka began his remarks by reading a message from Mary Jepperson ’80, a professor emerita and former accounting and finance department chair.
“There are four types of people in this world,” Jepperson’s message said. “People who see their glass as half full. People who see their glass as half empty. People who believe someone stole their glass. And people, like Boz, who are convinced their glass is overflowing. The best way we can honor my dear and wonderful friend Boz is to find joy and give joy. Boz found tremendous joy in his work. He loved, loved, loved everything about being here at Saint John’s and Saint Ben’s.”
“Imagine a world where everyone found as much joy as Boz did in their personal lives and their faith,” Trnka continued. “That sounds like heaven.”
Bostrom’s son Wyatt ’24 spoke of his father’s can-do attitude and his relentless advocacy for what he thought was right, especially when it came to his students.
“My dad didn’t just live, he lived unapologetically,” said Wyatt before introducing his sister Reggie Sofia, who performed a series of songs to honor her father.
“When my dad had an idea, he didn’t wait for the right time to do it,” Wyatt continued. “He didn’t wait until he was ready to do it, and he certainly didn’t ask anyone’s permission to do it. Anyone who knew my dad knew that if you told him not to do something, he’d go out of his way just to make that happen.”
Also speaking Sunday were Bostrom’s brother Patrick ’99, former CSB and SJU colleague and family friend Nate Dehne and Bostrom’s former students/advisees Daniel Tripicchio ’17 and Aaron Syverson ’23.
Syverson, an All-American quarterback during his time at SJU, spoke of Boz’s love for Bennie and Johnnie athletics, and how that was indicative of the love he had for students at the schools as a whole.
“When people would say Boz loves Johnnie football, he’d correct them,” Syverson said. “He’d say Boz likes Johnnie football, but Boz loves Johnnie football players. I think the same thing can be said today. Boz liked CSB and SJU, but Boz loved Bennies and Johnnies.”
The ceremony concluded with current Johnnie football players helping present Kacey with a one-of-a-kind Johnnie red rocking chair – a companion to the giant red and blue chair Bostrom had in his front yard.
“This is now your red chair,” CSB and SJU Scholar-in-Residence Carol Bruess said. “We decided to make it a rocking chair for one reason … Boz rocked.
“May this chair bring you just a little bit of comfort and a big Boz-style reminder of our big love for you … forever and always,” she continued. “We love you and your family.”
