Lyle Hojem died last week at 92 years old.
Even in the last few weeks of his life, Lyle Hojem was making plans to split firewood with his son.
Ross Hojem said his dad never really slowed down, even at nearly 93.
“He was always looking for something,” Ross Hojem said. “He was always thinking ahead.”
Lyle Hojem, a former fire district commissioner, Lewis County Planning Commission member and county commission candidate, died at 92 on Friday at his home in Chehalis after a brief battle with pancreatic cancer.
Ross Hojem said his father was “always on the ground floor” in his life, starting with his role as one of the founders of several fire districts, and continuing to his positions on the county planning commission and in the Chehalis River Basin Flood Authority.
“If we could all give back to the community around us like Dad did, it’d be a heck of a better place,” he said.
Lewis County Fire District 5 is organizing a celebration of life for Hojem scheduled for 1 p.m. May 7 at Bethel Church in Chehalis.
The Fire District is also organizing a procession for Lyle Hojem from the Southwest Washington Fairgrounds to the church.
“Dad’s gonna love it,” Ross Hojem said, noting that his dad would probably enjoy even more the notion that the procession might hold up traffic.
Lyle Hojem grew up in the Fords Prairie area of Centralia during the Great Depression. When his father broke his back, Hojem and his brothers and sisters and mother had to work to support the family.
“He just never was one to complain,” Ross Hojem said.
Like his father during the Depression, Lyle Hojem broke his own back working at a tire store at about 18 years old — an injury that kept him out of World War II, his son said, but never held him back.
Ross Hojem described his dad as “rabble rouser” who once enjoyed racing his Ford Model A.
“Then he became a guy that you’d want to be,” he said.
In the 1940s and ‘50s, Lyle Hojem was a forest warden in Lewis County.
He later helped form fire districts in Onalaska, Toledo, Mossyrock and Napavine — four of the first five fire districts in the county.
When interviewed in 2005 by former Chronicle editor Brian Mittge, Hojem said “nearly all the populated land in the county is covered by a fire protection district, something I’m pretty … proud of.”
Hojem represented Lewis County on the Chehalis Basin Partnership, then the Chehalis River Basin Flood Authority. He served on the Lewis County Planning Commission for decades and on the Lewis County Fire District 5 board for 49 years, starting in 1955.
He was the western region manager for the state Department of Natural Resources for 20 years and later worked as a forest management consultant. In 2002, he started working as a project manager for the Port of Centralia.
His son Ross has been a logger and basketball coach, and younger son Kent is the CEO of the Washington State Fair. His wife Beverly died in 2001.
At 85 years old in 2008, he ran for Lewis County commissioner for District 2, losing to Bill Schulte in the general election, although he won the August primary. Lyle Hojem ran as a Republican and focused his campaign on the importance of private property rights and flood protection.
Ross Hojem described his father as stubborn, not meaning it to sound detrimental.
“I didn’t realize how close he and I were until he was gone,” Ross Hojem said. “I didn’t realize how alike we were.”
Ross Hojem said his dad was a real character whose colorful language and witticisms prompted the family to create a book of “Lyle-isms” to record his finer moments.
“Probably none of them should be repeated in the newspaper,” Ross Hojem said. “ ... He was frustratingly honest and candid.”
In his interview with Mittge, Lyle Hojem said he’d need to live to be “134” to get everything done that he planned for his life.
However, at 92, his family knew he was starting to slow down.
Lyle Hojem had a bad heart valve, and six weeks before his death, his family went to Swedish Medical Center in Seattle to look at options for having it replaced. Doctors found he had two clogged arteries, complicating the situation.
At the same time, Lyle Hojem began complaining about belly pain, Ross Hojem said, but everyone, including his doctors, thought it was likely nerves or stress from his upcoming heart surgery.
Two weeks ago, doctors installed stents to help clear his arteries. His belly pain continued, and he spent seven days at Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia, where he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
“He was flirting with the nurses up until the last day in the hospital,” Ross Hojem said.
Lyle Hojem’s family thought they’d have a few months left with their patriarch.
“I brought him home a week ago Thursday,” Ross Hojem said. “… He had a bucket list.”
However, the cancer had other plans, and Lyle Hojem died Friday, with family members by his side through his last days.
“I wish and hope I could live a full life like that,” Ross Hojem said Monday. “There is a huge hole in my life now. Dad just has always been there for me no matter what.”
