Boehm drove from Chicago to his hometown, Springfield, Illinois, with a lead foot as heavy as his heart that day. He spent the next week on what felt like some other planet, one where coronavirus and its looming impact was second to sitting sentry at his mom’s bedside.
Before she passed, Dee handed Boehm a letter filled with everything she wanted him to remember, including her most repeated adage: “Every problem has a solution. Find the solution.”With the entire restaurant industry – one of the largest private employers in America – on life support, Boehm put his grief on ice and got to work., a new advocacy group fighting for a voice in the federal government, he changed his elevator pitches from opening restaurants to aiding recovery.
But Dee was different. Patient and shy, she spoke deliberately, keeping her cards close to her chest. Honesty was compulsory with Dee, Boehm said, and hard work was a pre-requisite for respect.If I needed something to be thought about very logically or very clearly, she was the person I would turn to for that opinion.“If I needed something to be thought about very logically or very clearly, she was the person I would turn to for that opinion,” he says.
“Alexis Carrington eating caviar on ‘Dynasty,’” he said. “And Jack Tripper on ‘Three’s Company’ was a chef cooking fancy French food, and, for one reason or another, those things just resonated with me.” At almost 21, he sold everything that didn’t fit into his Suzuki Samurai and headed to Florida to dip his toe into the food world.
Just under 48 hours after his mother passed, Boehm found himself on the road again, driving back to Chicago to face a second death of sorts: Saying goodbye for an unknown amount of time to his other family, the one that populates his restaurants.
Not even 2 million deaths is worth a USA economic depression... Nothing.