Jim Boehm encountered God and a mission to help others after life-altering events
By William Van de Planque | On Mission
OSHKOSH, WI — As the executive director of Fr. Carr’s Place 2B, a life enrichment center in Oshkosh, Jim Boehm helps others journey from addiction and despair toward healing and renewed purpose.
He can only fully understand that journey because he has lived it.
Boehm struggled with alcoholism for most of his life before coming to Fr. Carr’s to volunteer for the first time in 2018. He had primarily worked in the liquor and beer industry and was working for a Budweiser wholesaler at the time.
He had also been volunteering at a local emergency homeless shelter in Oshkosh called Day by Day Shelter, which was then closed during the warmer months.
On May 6, 2018, St. Raphael the Archangel Parish, where Boehm and his wife, Karen, had become members soon after getting married in 1994, hosted an event called Servant Sunday, during which various nonprofit organizations set up information booths for parishioners to learn about volunteer opportunities. Fr. Carr’s was one of them.
Bob Wayne, the executive director of Fr. Carr’s in 2018, was at the event sharing information about the life enrichment center, and Boehm approached him about volunteer opportunities.
“‘I love working with the homeless population and helping people,’” Boehm recalled telling Wayne. “‘Do you guys have anything that I can do?’’’
Wayne told Boehm to come in the next day to answer phones at Fr. Carr’s, and when Boehm arrived to volunteer that Monday evening, he had a heart attack.
“It was a bad heart attack,” he said. “I was literally dead for eight to 10 minutes on the floor downstairs … They didn’t expect me to make it. They thought I was going to die.”
When the ambulance and EMTs arrived, they used a defibrillator and got a pulse on the seventh shock.
“Even the cardiologist said that I had less than a five percent chance of making it,” Boehm said. “He didn’t use the word miracle, but a lot of people did.”
After being rushed to the hospital and receiving last rites from a local priest, Boehm spent the next week there in a medically induced coma.
“I remember going to Fr. Carr’s that Monday night, and the next thing I remember is going to church the following Sunday,” he said.
Boehm’s mental health was greatly affected after coming home from the hospital.
“I lost my purpose,” he said. “(I thought) ‘Why did God keep me here? I should have died. Why didn’t I die? Now what am I going to do?’”
During the time leading up to the heart attack, Boehm was in the midst of a difficult time in his recovery from alcoholism.
“I had a tough recovery,” he said. “I would go months without drinking. I had a relapse after the heart attack, and that was a really low point in my life.”
Fr. Tom Long, who has been the pastor of St. Raphael the Archangel Parish since 2017, helped Boehm a lot during that time, he said.
That summer, Boehm did a Cursillo, a retreat-like weekend which he describes as “an encounter with Jesus Christ, a pretty intense encounter with him, for three days.”
“I came out of it knowing the Holy Spirit better than I’ve ever known him,” he said.
On the last day of the Cursillo, participants receive a cross, which Boehm has proudly worn ever since.
For the next four years, Boehm continued to volunteer at Fr. Carr’s, and after over a year of volunteering, he decided to get more involved by starting a weekly Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting.
“I came here to volunteer and answer phones, but eventually, because I am an alcoholic, I noticed that they didn’t have an AA meeting here,” he said. “Almost 100 percent of the guys are alcoholics. If not an alcoholic, they are an addict.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Boehm came to Fr. Carr’s one day to do an AA meeting, but no one showed up. At the time, the organization was looking for a new executive director.
“It just hit me — and I’m sure the Holy Spirit had a lot to do with it — that there was so much more to do here,” he said. “I want to do more. That’s when I decided that I should seriously consider being the director.”
He started in his current role as executive director on August 1, 2022. Today, he continues to help others in their own recovery journeys.
His healing began with humility and honesty, as does all healing, Boehm said. “Once you’re exposing yourself to what’s really going on, that’s when the healing starts.”
Boehm believes that healing and strengthening can come from understanding a particular cross that one carries.
“When you can take that cross you are carrying … and you understand it, eventually that cross will become a gift because the Lord has taught you how to deal with it,” he said. “I can take my alcoholism and everything in that cross that not only I carried, but my wife carried, and my two kids carried, and now it’s a gift because I fully understand what the majority of these people are going through. I can help them, and that’s the gift that God gave me.”
In addition to hosting AA meetings, now known as the 1st & 3rd Meeting, the Mother Teresa Center, which is the community center on the campus of Fr. Carr’s, has become home to a wide variety of clubs and organizations of the community that use it for regular meetings and event space. The community center also houses the food pantry and a chapel, where Mass is celebrated every day except Sunday.
Founded originally as a youth center by Fr. Martin Carr in 1974, Fr. Carr’s consists of the Mother Teresa Center; the St. Francis Free Clinic, which provides a variety of medical care services at no cost to the patient; and the Bethlehem Inn, a temporary shelter that provides help finding jobs, healing from addiction and encountering God to homeless individuals working toward rebuilding their lives.
“We really are one of a kind,” Boehm said. “There are other free clinics, shelters and food pantries and things like that, but to have all three in one spot is very unique.”
The life enrichment center is operated almost entirely by volunteers. Boehm said he often gets asked how Fr. Carr’s maintains its volunteer base, which consists of 30-40 volunteers every day and, at times, over 200 for large events.
“Our mission statement is Matthew 25:31-46, the Corporal Works of Mercy,” he said. “That’s what Fr. Carr picked out. That’s why people are here. This is part of their spiritual life; this is what they want to do for the Lord.”
Now finishing up his fourth year as executive director, Boehm said he is approaching his final years as the executive director of Fr. Carr’s.
“It would be greedy of me not to give someone else this opportunity because it’s such a blessing to be able to do it,” he said.
At the end of his first year in his role, he found out he had cancer. His mother, brother and sister all died within the next two years. He has since become cancer-free.
“I’ve had four life-changing events in four years,” he said. “I don’t know how I would have handled it had I not had the experience here. I truly live without much fear; I trust the Lord.”