Ebby Boehm – Southeastern Guide Dogs Staff
Assistant Chef Ebby Boehm smiles in the new kitchen of the new Barpal-Hirst Student Center.
When Assistant Chef Ebby Boehm prepares and serves delicious meals from the Southeastern Guide Dogs dining hall, his calm demeanor and easy conversational style don’t reveal his hidden adventurous side. This guy helped set a current world record for skydiving’s largest nighttime free-fall formation and a former world record for the largest free-fall formation! Since 1978, Ebby has been jumping out of planes, surpassing 1,600 jumps on New Years Day.
For 10 years until the 2008 recession, Ebby helped to oversee food service for 50 schools in Manatee County, followed by stints at various restaurants. When he started working at Southeastern Guide Dogs in October, 2015, Ebby says, “I felt like I walked over the emerald hills and there’s Oz—or I’d died and gone to heaven! People here care about the mission and about how things are done. Working at Southeastern Guide Dogs has reignited the pleasures of working with a professional team focused on a common goal.”
“It is a blessing to actually cook for people,” he says. “In my field, you are generally cooking to a ticket, to a time limit, to a budget, or to a window. Here, I actually get to come out talk with our students, interact, and find out what they like. Putting the food together and planning the meals around the people—that’s a whole other level of satisfaction.”
Chef Ebby appears here with his record-breaking skydiving team on the January 2017 issue of Parachutist magazine. Photo credits: Laszlo Andacs, professional skydiving videographer, laszloimage.com.
