BOISE, Idaho — Someone who helped shape the modern look of Idaho’s capitol city and its surroundings has passed.
Longtime Boisean, Hans Borbonus, died after battling a series of medical issues in recent years.
Master gardener, philanthropist, friend to many, father of a fallen soldier -- he will be remembered as a man of many talents and layers.
Hans Borbonus escaped his war torn homeland of Germany in 1958.
Sponsored by a fellow German who managed Bogus Basin, Fentress Kuhn talked him into coming to Boise where he quickly put his German horticulture studies to work hauling manure to fertilize lawns in Boise’s north end.
It wouldn’t be long before he met and befriended local grocery magnate Joe Albertson who hired Borbonus as his personal gardener and landscaper, and the work soon started pouring in for the German immigrant.
He bought a big piece of land on South Cloverdale Road and started up Cloverdale Nursery, which became the go-to nursery for thousands of development projects around the region in the 60s, 70s and 80s.
In 1987, he was commissioned to design and develop an old horse pasture in the heart of Boise into a nature beautiful parks. Two years later, the award winning Katherine Albertson Park was born, considered one of the Northwest's most breathtaking parks.
Hans was enamored with golf and after spending a month with world-renowned golf architect Pete Dye in Palm Springs, he designed and built Falcon Crest Golf Club in Kuna. And, as a supporter of the military and families impacted by war, gave veterans, current servicemen and their families free rounds of golf.
He and his former wife Maggie’s only child, Private First Class John Borbonus was killed in Baghdad in April of 2007 while protecting his platoon from an incoming truck bomb. An act of heroism that earned the presentation of the Silver Star and Purple Heart, which the military performed in a ceremony at Falcon Crest weeks later.
His support of the military never waned and never did his disdain for war.
"Our people in government, if they had children at war,” said Borbonus after his son was killed in Bagdad, “I feel maybe they would think different. Let them all come home. Don't spend another life."
With a home on the lake in Donnelly, Borbonus had a deep interest in the economics of Valley County and when he was approached to donate land he owned on the banks of the Payette River to a nonprofit water park soon to be named Kelly’s Whitewater Park, he didn’t hesitate. And it's there that the first person to greet thousands of visitors every summer is his son, John, in a larger-than-life statue.
Hans Borbonus, forever remembered as a man who not only changed his adopted homeland with his hands, but also his heart.
Hans Borbonus was 85 years old.