SJS News

For Jeff Bohman ’75, Saint James was more than a school. It was, as he puts it, “my lifeline.”

That phrase says a great deal about the way Jeff tells his story. There is humility in it, and gratitude too. He does not present his life as a straight line of achievement, but as a journey shaped by family, faith, opportunity, and a growing conviction that success means little unless it is shared in service to others.

In 2004, Jeff helped to found Lunches for Learning, a nonprofit organization established to break the cycle of poverty in rural Honduras by providing school lunches to children. The mission is both practical and profound: if children can count on a meal at school, they are far more likely to stay there, complete their education, and gain the literacy and skills that can open the door to a better future. But to understand why that mission became so important to Jeff, it helps to begin closer to home.

Jeff grew up in Hagerstown, not far from campus. He arrived at Saint James at a pivotal moment. Looking back, he describes his younger self with candor and humor. 

“If I’d done better in public school, I never would have gotten to Saint James,” he said. “I was having too much fun outside of the classroom. Then my folks decided, unless they sent me away to school, I was not going to be college material. So, Saint James was my lifeline.”

Saint James marked an important turning point. It offered structure, direction, and a foundation that stayed with him long after graduation.

His path after Saint James was not entirely conventional. Jeff first attended Guilford College, where he played lacrosse and initially planned to study forestry. Later, after returning home and reassessing his goals, he earned his Maryland real estate license, attended American University, and worked for Chicago Title Insurance Company in Washington, D.C. It was there that he discovered computers and the rapidly changing world of information technology.

That discovery led to a long career in IT that took him from Atlanta to Florida and ultimately to Montgomery, Alabama, where he and his wife Karen would settle. Over time, he transitioned into IT consulting within a public accounting firm, helping to build a practice and retiring after 25 years of experience. 
Along the way, life was anchored by family. Jeff and Karen, who both grew up near Saint James, did not meet until college. They were married in the Saint James Chapel by Father Owens in 1981. More than four decades later, they remain happily married and grateful for their two adult children, Sarah and Bobby, and three grandchildren. 

Service has always been an important part of Jeff’s life. “My parents, they modeled that,” he said.

Over the years, that commitment found expression through his church, local charities, and eventually through a friendship that would lead to something much larger.

That friendship was with Ron Hicks, a fellow member of Messiah Lutheran Church in Montgomery. In 2004, while on a motorcycle trip through Central America, Ron encountered a young girl begging near the Honduras-El Salvador border. He gave her money and watched her immediately buy food. The moment stayed with him. He could not shake the image of the child and eventually returned to Honduras to find her.

What he discovered changed everything.

The girl, named Anabel, was not an orphan, as he had first assumed. She had a family. But like many children in the Valle District of Honduras, she faced an impossible reality: go to school and be hungry or skip school in order to find food. A local principal told Ron that on any given day, roughly 30 percent of students were absent because they were working, begging, or searching for something to eat. That insight became the seed of Lunches for Learning.
Jeff was there at the beginning. He and Ron were both serving on their church council when the idea began to take shape. 

“We decided if we could get enough seed money together as a church congregation, we would start a food program at that school,” Jeff said. 

What started as a response to one child’s need quickly became something broader: a grassroots effort to keep children in school by addressing one of the most basic barriers to learning.

Lunches for Learning grew from that first school into an independent nonprofit incorporated in both the United States and Honduras. The organization now serves nearly 50 rural elementary schools in Honduras’ Valle District and provides daily nutritious lunches to approximately 2,000 students. The broader mission remains focused on breaking the cycle of poverty through education, nutrition, and long-term community partnership. 

What makes the model especially effective is that it is not simply charity delivered from afar. It is a partnership. Parents prepare and serve the meals. School principals oversee daily preparation and distribution. Local staff in Honduras manage operations. Sponsors in the United States build sustained relationships with individual schools. “We ensure that they have some skin in the game,” Jeff said. That shared investment has helped make the program durable and locally respected.

Jeff first served as vice president, then as treasurer for 15 years, and continues as a member of the board. In the early years, that meant frequent travel to Honduras, creating accounting procedures, coordinating operations, and helping build the organizational systems needed for a growing nonprofit. Even now, he remains actively involved in financial oversight and international transfers.

Over the years, the organization’s work has expanded beyond meals alone. Sponsors sometimes help fund kitchens, textbooks, water systems, school improvements, and expanded classroom space. Jeff describes schools with no electricity, no running water, and kitchens built around open fires. Yet he also speaks about the transformative power of even modest improvements. 

“The most successful thing we’ve done with this program is to develop relationships with these communities, with individual sponsors,” he said.

Those relationships have changed lives on both sides of the partnership. Jeff has seen churches and civic groups visit Honduras, meet the children they support, and return home more committed than ever. He has also seen former students move forward with the kind of opportunities education can create. One student who benefited from the program, for example, was able to continue past sixth grade and eventually become a law enforcement officer. For Jeff, those stories reinforce the importance of the work.

Still, one of the most telling things he says about Lunches for Learning is not about growth for growth’s sake. It is about faithfulness. 

“We have from the beginning made a commitment that we would not start something that we could not continue on a long-term basis,” he said. 

That principle has helped shape an organization committed not to quick fixes, but to steady, sustainable impact.

Jeff’s work reminds us that gratitude can become generosity, and that a lifeline received can, in turn, become hope offered to others.