The Boz Memorial

Duane Reger, Charlie Ehlert, Roger Simmons and Lindsay Nothern pay their respects to former KTVB photographer Mark Bozman, Putnam photo.

MARK BOZMAN REMEMBERED

Boise--On Sunday friends, family, reporters and fellow photogs had the chance to say goodbye to video legend Mark Bozman. The 47-year old iconoclastic COPS photographer was killed in a motorcycle accident last month near his California home.

"Boz and I were friends of happenstance, thrown together on the weekend shift at KTVB," said former reporter Jake Putnam. "Boz hated working during the week because he didn't like the shirt-n-ties running things and on the weekend he called the assignment shots and that meant more feature stories or hard-core breaking news that he lived for."

"The first weekend I worked," recalled Putnam. "We were dispatched to the fairgrounds to do a story on a horse with a broken leg...by the time we got there the horse was hauled away and racing resumed, Boz looked at me and said 'no horse, no story'."

Former Chief Photog Duane Reger and former News Director Lindsay Nothern embrace at the Bozman memorial. They hadn't seen each other in more than 20 years.--Putnam photo

" We both knew that I had to turn a package for the 5pm newscast and and it was already pushing 4. Shoeshine girls. We did a feature story on shoeshine girls and it stole the show. It was so good that people talked about it for weeks, the girls made a fortune and Boz pulled my ass out of the fire once again," said Putnam.

Halloween balloons were released while a homemade mortar with rockets blasted the silence in memory of Mark Bozman on Sunday--Putnam photo

At the Memorial service more than a hundred people gathered at the Willowbrook clubhouse off Glennwood near his parents home. There were many family members and KTVB oldtimers like former Ada County Commissioner Roger Simmons. Former Chief Photog Duane Reger, fellow photog Charlie Ehlert, News Director and Assignment Desk Editor Lindsay Nothern, not to mention Director John Patatchec, his buddies from KREM, lovely wife Shannon, grown up son Eric. It was a rich, lively memorial complete with fireworks, just the way ole Boz would have liked it.