John Thomas Bischoff

John was born on September 15, 1946 in Blackfoot, ID, the only child of John Percival Bischoff and Rebekah (Reba) Sutherland. He had a stellar childhood academic career, rarely deviating from a 4.0 GPA at St Margaret's and later Blackfoot High, where he graduated in the top of his class in 1964. He went on to college at ISU, where he graduated cum laude with a Bachelors of physics in 1969. During college he met and married his first wife, Jeanette Sciarani, in 1967 and had a son, John Mike, in 1968. After college, he worked for GE in New York, where his team wrote some patents, which carry his name as coinventor (GE retained the rights to the patents) that are still referenced to this day (specifically LASIK parents reference them). After the project he was hired for was canceled, he went back to Blackfoot to work in his dad's paint store, which he eventually bought out when his dad retired. The Teton Dam flood proved too much stress for him and his family, and they separated in 1977, with his family moving to Boise while he stayed in Blackfoot, where he kept running the paint store. The paint store failed soon after, and he rejoined his family in Boise, where he became a computer technician/programmer, starting at Hubco. His job took him to McCall, and his family joined him. In McCall, he got the entrepreneurial bug again and bought a small store, Idaho Woodworks, which he and his family built into an art store, renaming it Idaho Artworks. In McCall, he and his family separated again for the final time and he went back to computer programming in Boise. In 1985, he took custody of his son to graduate him from high school. After he saw his son off to the Navy, he opened another art business in Boise, Syringa Galleries, while maintaining his computer programming job at a lower priority. While still working in Boise, he moved to Garden Valley. His hobbies were diverse- sailing, hiking, photography, wood carving, cooking, scuba diving, cabin building, rving; he taught himself nearly anything he wanted to learn. In mid-life he began traveling to exotic locales to pursue his scuba diving passion. He dove in cold and warm water, eventually becoming certified as a dive master. In 1992 John married Marilyn Cross Shinn. They resided in Boise and observed wildlife on weekends in John's cabin in Garden Valley, ID. After retiring they became snowbirds, spending several winters rving in Arizona where they explored the Sonoran desert. In the summer they enjoyed the Oregon Coast. John served as a volunteer for the Discovery Center of Idaho, at Bruneau Dunes State Park and national recreation sites in Oregon and New Mexico. In recent years, John enjoyed walking the beach in Bandon, OR with his dog, Bruce