Riding the air waves: Boehm connects to the world through radio

(Sentinel photo by Magdalene Landegent) Donald Boehm, of Merrill, connects with ham radio operators like himself from his radio desk. Boehm was recently honored for holding his ham radio license for 50 years. [Click to enlarge]

But that's exactly what Donald and Harriet Boehm's cozy green house, tucked into the quiet streets of Merrill, is.

Don has spoken with people from every state in the nation and on all seven continents.

He has talked to more than 1,000 citizens from about 230 countries around the globe -- all with amateur radio.

Amateur, or ham, radio allows people to use radio communications equipment to connect and talk with other "hams" near and far for fun or for service.

Don, recently honored for completing 50 years of holding his ham radio license, has covered the walls of one room with paper cards from places as far as Mozambique, Antarctica and the Galapagos Islands.

About the size of a postcard, each one depicts the country is is from and lists the name and call letters of a ham radio operator Don talked to in that nation.

After two hams connect via radio waves, they send each other these cards by mail.

One of Don's favorite cards is from Zedan Hussein, of Amman, Jordan, who may have been related to Jordanian royalty.

Don, whose call name is K0KKH, is one of only a few people in Iowa who have marked 50 years as a licensed ham radio operator.

He started a few months after he married Harriet, although he'd been studying to take the test to be licensed even before then.

"You had to take a Morse code test, sending and receiving 13 words per minute," Don said. "And there was a written test, too. It was just something I wanted to do."

Harriet grinned.

"I heard the dit-dit-daaah-dit of Morse code many hours before he passed the test," she said.

Very seldom do people use Morse code anymore, Don said.

"I never used it," he said. "I just had to learn it for the test. I enjoyed talking to people more."

Once licensed, Don began to build up his supply of radio equipment. He started with a transmitter and a receiver.

Today, in his newer equipment, those two are combined into one, just one item on a desk full of dials, switches, speakers, microphones and scanners.

In his back yard, a 40-foot radio tower stands ready to beam Don's message to any corner of the globe.

Some nights, he'd stay up late, contacting people in different time zones miles and miles away.

"He'd say, 'Harriet, come in her and listen to this. Here's a guy from Jordan I'm talking to,'" his wife remembered.

While connecting with hams around the world is the fun part of using ham radio, Don has also used his license to serve people.

"I used to sit outside on the hill when we had storms at night to watch for tornadoes," he said. "I'd take my radio equipment with me, and if I saw anything I was supposed to radio in to the main station at the airport."

Ham radio operators, like Don, have also used their ham radios as a phone patch, allowing people in the United States to talk on the phone to soldiers overseas via radio.

One of Don's five daughters, Brenda Delance, has followed her father into the arena of ham radio and has also connected families with soldiers.

A soldier would send a Christmas message via radio, and that message would be passed from one ham radio operator to another until it reached a ham like Delance who lived near the soldier's family.

"Then I'd call the family on a landline and deliver the message from their son or daughter," Delance said. "Sometimes it would be the only communication they'd get. They were so grateful."

She and other hams helped out with Le Mars parade lineups and kept communication up when RAGBRAI bicyclists stayed in Le Mars.

Things have changed, she said.

"That was all before the Internet and cell phones were big," Delance explained.

But some uses of ham radio haven't been cancelled out.

In weather situations, like the year a tornado struck Le Mars in the mid-1990s, ham radio operators aid other communications people.

Don has also been creative with the use of his ham radio.

"When my grandkids were little, around Christmas time I brought them into the radio room and called up a guy in North Pole, Ala. He played like he was Santa Claus, telling them how he was loading up his sleigh," Don said with a grin. "Boy their eyes were big."

Don got in on the boom of ham radios.

In the late 1970s, he was part of a Siouxland area club with dozens of members that met weekly for coffee.

When Don suffered a stroke, fellow hams showed up at his house to erect the 40-foot antenna he had been setting up in his backyard. His previous antenna had been taken down by a storm.

The group's numbers are smaller now, but some, like Don, keep tuning in to connect with people around the globe.

Don is proud of the fact that, while his setup is several times smaller than many other hams, he's still contacted people from 230 countries.

And counting.

"I like trying to get all these different countries," Don said. "You can talk all over the world."