J.C. Boone Jr.

Optimist International President 1995-1996

J.C. Boone Jr., who served Optimist International as President from 1995 to 1996, died November 5, 2022 at his home in Albemarle, North Carolina. He was 87.

Boone became an optimist, in the philosophical sense, only after studying one of the darkest times in human history. Stationed in post-war Germany while serving in the U.S. Army, he began researching Adolf Hitler’s rise to power for his doctoral dissertation, interviewing several people close to the German despot, including Hitler’s younger sister, Paula Wolf.

In speaking with these people, Boone was struck that such a small group could commit such monumental evil.

“Adolf Hitler and six members of the [Nazi Party] brought the world to the brink of disaster,” he said in his 1995 speech to the Optimist International Convention in San Antonio, Texas. He wondered at the time if a small group could also change the world for the better.

When Boone returned to the United States in 1960, he presented his research to his local Optimist Club and was quickly wrangled into joining by a friend.

“Frankly, I joined the Optimist Club at that time to get him off my back,” Boone said in a 1995 interview. I had no intention of becoming an active and participating member of the club. But when I got into the club and started participating in some of the programs … I saw that the Optimists were very active in their local community. We kept our money in the local community and I really became attached to it.”

During his time as Optimist International President, Boone launched an initiative to expand club membership and traveled to the Philippines to oversee the chartering of the first club there. He established a relief effort for the Island of Montserrat after a series of devastating volcanic eruptions. And he established an archive to preserve the organization’s history.

In his outgoing speech at the 1996 convention in Las Vegas, Boone remarked, “As Optimists, let us all conclude that a hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove. But the world will be different, because I was important in the life of a child.”

Boone is survived by his wife, Ann, two children, four grandchildren and four great grandchildren.