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Remembering Everett Bohls, a man of the land
“Land was in his blood.”
That’s how Mary Bohls, 82, summed up her late husband, Everett Bohls, consummate Austin businessman, developer and outdoorsman, who died Aug. 12 at age 91.
So it follows naturally that his son, Rex Bohls, his wife, Laura, and their children, Catherine and Will, donated $2,400 to seed the Tarrytown flank of Mopac in memory of this man of nature.
Their gift benefited the American-Statesman’s ongoing Lady Bird’s Legacy project, which has raised more than $100,000 for such Texas Department of Transportation wildflower plantings, along with signature packets of seeds from Wildseed Farms for schoolchildren. Recent rains bolster hopes for a bountiful wildflower spring at various Central Texas locations.
That the Bohls family would care about the enduring beauty of Central Texas is hardly news.
“We’re the Bee Cave Bohls, not the Pflugerville Bohls,” explains Rex Bohls, a distant relative of American-Statesman sports columnist Kirk Bohls and proud of both branches.
Theirs were among the area’s ancestral families, the Bee Cave branch having moved to there in 1851 “because Govalle got too crowded,” Mary Bohls says. A developer restored the Bohls pioneers’ rough cabins and perched them on upper Barton Creek near Texas 71.
“My father got up at 5 a.m. every morning to run the trot line down on the river in the dark,” Rex Bohls says. “He’d gather eggs and complete the other chores before walking two miles to school. Later, he boarded in Austin to attend Austin High School.”
Everett Bohls hunted and fished his entire life, making a supreme ritual of deer season, according to his family.
Mary Bohls’ family goes pretty far back, too. She once lived in the Neill-Cochran House on San Gabriel Street, now a museum house owned by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of Texas.
Everett Bohls graduated from the University of Texas in 1941 with a degree in business administration. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II, then earned a license as a certified public accountant. His entrepreneurial imagination and diplomatic negotiating skills led to the building of a life insurance company, concrete block manufacturing company, cafeteria, grocery stores, restaurants (including the iconic Tavern), public record search company, title company, lawn service, waste disposal company and retail boat company. He also developed homes, apartments and commercial property.
With such a busy life in business and the out of doors, along with raising a family, Everett Bohls still found time to paint and garden.
“My father began painting in the 1970s,” Rex Bohls says. “On a trip to London with my mother, Dad was inspired by the paintings he saw by Winston Churchill and said ‘I can do that.’ For Father’s Day of that year, my mother gave Dad an easel and painter’s beret and he began to paint. He had no training or background in art but for the next 40-plus years he became a prolific amateur artist.”
The tricky soils and terrains of the Hill Country didn’t daunt the gardener in him.
“He always had a small garden in the backyard of his home, growing tomatoes and okra every summer,” Laura Bohls says. “A few years ago my husband bought a ranch near Marble Falls. Rex took his father to see the ranch and Mr. Bohls — we called him “Pappy” — saw a large overgrown garden. This garden became “Pappy’s Garden” and Mr. Bohls took great interest and pride in reclaiming it, planting and caring for a variety of vegetables. When he harvested, he’d bring the vegetables back to Austin, sack them up and leave them on the doorsteps of his neighbors to their delight.”
The Bohls have expressed interest in enhanced plantings along Mopac. They’ll have a chance, since the Lady Bird’s Legacy project continues through 2012.
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