BK Blast Archive

With sadness I have to announce that  John Richard Folsom, Jr.,  father of BK member Jean Folsom, passed away yesterday morning in Orlando, FL after fighting his fourth bout of pneumonia this year.  Jean was able to be by his side all day Tuesday and most of Wednesday before he drew his last breath around 1:30AM on Thursday. Jean and her brothers and sisters all had time to say goodbye, and he recognized that they were there with him. 

John was a Mason and a proud veteran of World War II and the Korean War.  He either whistled or sang his family awake every morning but Saturday with Reveille.  He loved parades and John Phillips Sousa tunes.  To say he was an avid gardener would be an understatement.  In Winters, Jean's family lived off the frozen and “put up” produce that her mother processed from his harvests.

He LOVED computers and Jean recalls going to his office in Syracuse, NY in the 1960’s and seeing the HUGE banks of floor-to-ceiling processors that filled large rooms in the basement.  (The same storage capacity today probably resides in a couple of microchips!). Jean says, " I hope he got over his disappointment that none of his offspring became a computer programmer – I’m pretty sure it was a dream of his." 

John was a deep thinker and though he usually spoke with his eyes closed and often appeared to be napping, he was usually pondering the universe – literally.  He had some theory about the universe being spiral in nature. He was also completely certain that he could prove there was life on Mars based on the photos being transmitted by the rover, and he wrote long letters to the folks at NASA about it. 

He wanted everyone to have access to a good education and just this week Jean learned from her brother that he would give the kids in his Florida neighborhood $500 dollars when they graduated from high school so that they could buy a computer for college.  He pledged to fund two scholarships at his alma mater, Salem State University, though he died before fulfilling that pledge.  If you would like to make donations in his memory to his scholarship fund, please let Jean know and she will forward the information to you.

John has four grandsons, two of whom are married, one granddaughter and a younger sister, as well as too many nieces and nephews to count.  The family will be holding his funeral service at her aunt’s church in Danvers, MA before burying him next to her mother in the family plot in Salem.  Jean's father was a devout believer in heaven and that he would be with her mother for eternity.