David Paul Boesel

David Paul Boesel, 86, of Round Bay in Severna Park, Maryland, a social science researcher, died surrounded by family on Sunday, June 2, 2024, after a long illness. Dave was a loving father and husband, and was passionate about civil rights throughout his life, devoting much of his time to voter registration and turnout. He was also a skilled martial artist. He established Kaiwan Budokai, a Ju-Jitsu dojo in Severna Park and was President and Chairman of the American Ju-Jitsu Association. A fitness enthusiast, Dave enjoyed swimming, workouts at the gym, scuba diving, foreign travel, and boating on the Severn River. In his retirement he worked to prevent coastal erosion on the Severn. In 1964 he volunteered as part of the civil rights movement to register voters in Tennessee; he returned to this work in the 2010s and 2020s, registering voters and canvassing in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Dave was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio in 1938 to Paul and Dorothy Boesel. He attended high school at Western Reserve Academy where he lettered in wrestling, football, and track and graduated Summa Cum Laude. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in Comparative Literature and Philosophy from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., where he was president of the Chi Psi fraternity. He earned a masters degree in English and a doctorate in Government from Cornell University. He married Gail Joyce Turner in 1959, and together they had three children, daughters Kyle and Alison and son Justin. Dr. Boesel worked for most of his career doing policy research and program evaluation for federal, state, and local governments and non-profit organizations. He was a staff member on the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission, in 1967. He was featured in a 2024 PBS "American Experience" documentary on that controversial report called "Riot Report". In the 1970s he worked for the National Institute of Education (NIE), the precursor to the US Department of Education, where he was a co-author of the 1978 Safe Schools Study. He worked for Abt Associates in Cambridge, MA, then returned to the DC area in 1982 where he worked for the Defense Manpower Data Center before returning to the US Department of Education from which he retired. Later in his career he established a consultancy, Social Science Research Group, that did work to get the divorced wives of Foreign Service Officers a fair share of their retirement benefits, and did work studying schools on reservations for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Dave is survived by his wife Gail, daughters Kyle O'Connor and Alison Risso (Jon) both of Silver Spring, MD, son Justin Boesel (Molly) of Arlington, VA, his younger sister, Judy Kelly (David) of Greenwich, CT and five beloved grandchildren: Brendan O'Connor, Katherine O'Connor, Lydia Boesel, Eliza Risso and Alexander Risso. A memorial will be held at his Severna Park home on August 4, 2024. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the scholarship established in his memory by the American Jujitsu Association (contact them at https://americanjujitsuassociation.org/contact/) or the charity of your choice that supports civil rights.