Loren Boone

My friend and fraternity brother Loren Boone passed away yesterday after battling bone cancer. The two of us enjoyed university days and the birth of a new chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon at South Dakota State University more than fifty years ago. He continued working with the young men of that chapter as well as the national offices of SAE. He brought so much positive energy to everyone and everything he touched. Over the years and expanding geography we’d lost continuity of our relationship but still corresponded every year or so…thanks to email. The last we corresponded was three years ago…about the Chapter’s $1/Year Club. I last saw him in 1980.

I so admired his ability to share his leadership, his positive vision, his confidence in the people around him and the core principles of humanity and SAE. SAE has a vision statement called “The True Gentleman,” written by John Walter Wayland quite a long time ago. Loren was a True Gentleman, he lived this ideal and radiated all the tenets of the vision to those around him, he genuinely cared. Rest In Peace, Loren, you’ve given so much and we are thankful.

The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.