Obit: Bohaboy, Cecile (1915 - 2014)

Contact: Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon
E-mail: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org 

Surnames: Bohaboy, Hmielak, Grane, Schuh

----Source: Thorp Courier (Thorp, Clark Co, WI) 6/04/2014

Bohaboy, Cecile (31 October 1915 - 27 February 2014)

Cecile (Hmielak) and Edward Bohaboy were recently buried together in the Hmielak family gravesite at St. Hedwig Cemetery. The couple had been married for 73 years before Edward’s passing at the age of 100 on July 15, 2013. Cecile died peacefully on February 27, 2014. She was 98 years old.

Cecile was born on October 31, 1915, in the family home on a small family dairy farm just outside of Thorp,
Wisconsin. She was the youngest of six children born to John and Mary Hmielak who had emigrated from Poland to the United States in 1900 and moved to Thorp in 1911. She had two brothers, John and Edward and three sisters, Anne, Helen and Agnes.

Cecile grew up in Thorp, WI and attended Sterling School, a two-room country school for grades 1 through 8. She later attended Thorp High School and graduated as class salutatorian in 1934. After high school, she worked in the payroll department of Blue Moon Dairy and helped her parents on the farm doing milking and other chores. The family faced difficult financial times during the Great Depression, and Cecile joined her brother Edward and three sisters who had moved to the Chicago are in search of employment. Her eldest brother, John, remained on the family farm and helped it grow and prosper for three generations.

While working as a comptometer operator for Western Electric in Cicero, Illinois, one of Cecile’s co-workers arranged a blind date for her, and that date proved to be the love of her life. Edward Bohaboy and Cecile were married on July 4, 1940.

She is survived by her two sons: Allan (Nancy) of Rolling Meadows, and Philip (Lynne, deceased) of Palo Alto, California; four grandchildren (Karen Grane, Scott Bohaboy, Kasey Schuh, and Doug Bohaboy); and nine great-grandchildren.

Visitation and a funeral Mass were held on May 2, 2014, at Holy Family Catholic Church in Inverness, Illinois, and burial followed the next day at St. Hedwig’s Catholic Cemetery in Thorp, Wisconsin. Cecile’s children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, along with other relatives from Chicago, California, New York and Kentucky, came to Thorp for the burial and to celebrate Cecile’s life with members of the extended Hmielak family.