Contemplating next move: Prentic Boyd thankful for friends

By Jo Garcia-Cobb

For more than 15 years, the Koffee Konnection in downtown Mount Angel was many things to many people. Then the early morning fire on Feb. 10 closed one of the city’s favorite gathering places with smoke and water damage.

Owner Prentice Boyd is now left contemplating his next move rather than fixing culinary delights for his customers.

“I can’t wait to find out what he’s gonna do next,” said Laura Gooley-Zollner, 81, one of Prentice’s most loyal customers.

Every day, Gooley-Zollner would walk to the Koffee Konnection for breakfast after attending morning prayer and Mass at St. Mary’s Catholic Church.

“He’d give me omelets you’ve never had. He’d give me fresh raw fruits and raw vegetables. He’d see to it that I had my decaf coffee in my house. It was this way for almost 15 years. His place was my second home,” Gooley-Zollner exclaimed.

For other Koffee Konnection regulars, food wise, it was the “to die for” salmon clam chowder or “the out of this world” beef vegetable soup that are sorely missed.  Or the homey Marion berry pies, apple pies, and huckleberry ice cream. Boyd, after all, grew up in a family in small-town Ripley, Okla., where everything was made the old-fashioned way.

“He took great pride in making things from scratch as opposed to opening a can,” said Brett Wachter, who also frequented the Koffee Konnection for church services and for fellowship. A chaplain by vocation, Boyd opened the Koffee Konnection as a not-for-profit café cum all-purpose ministry facility where church services, weddings and counseling sessions were held after business hours.

Boyd’s past puts the unique enterprise in perspective. Raised in a non-church going family, Boyd was a young man in search of adventures when he moved to Ventura, Calif., in the mid-1960s.

While climbing Safeway’s management ladder, he worked in 18 different stores over a period of 22 years. His free time was spent hanging out in bars and partying. He later got hooked on “speed,” an amphetamine drug, and alcohol. “Truck drivers took two tablets a day to stay awake. I was taking 16 a day to keep going,” Boyd said.

Boyd hit a low point in his life, feeling trapped without any hope of survival. He was driving home to Ventura on the Ojai Valley freeway when he decided to end his life by driving 130 miles per hour toward a freeway concrete wall.

What happened instead, Boyd attributed to divine intervention. He eventually slowed down and drove to a family that he had been introduced to in Oxnard, Calif. He had known them for years and noticed that there was something special about their life.

“I didn’t have much to do with this family because I thought they went to church too much, but something told me I had to see them that day,” Boyd said.

That evening, Boyd waited at the family’s doorstep until they came home from church.

“They didn’t preach at me a lot. They told me that they weren’t religious, and that what they had was a relationship with God. We talked ’til the wee hours. What they shared with me penetrated into the depths of my being. I committed my life to Jesus Christ that night,” Boyd said.

Shortly thereafter, Boyd quit the drug and alcohol habit.

“God simply took it away from me,” he said. He met Louree months later and married her in 1972.

In 1977, they packed their bags and headed to Multnomah Biblical Seminary in Portland, where he trained to become a licensed pastor and certified chaplain.

After graduating in 1980, he worked as a prison chaplain at the Rocky Butte Prison in Portland and, later, at the MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in Woodburn. He also joined Alive Ministries and served as a counselor to youth, married couples, firemen, police officers, and officiated at weddings and funerals.

Prentice, Louree, and their four children, Tiffany, Jonathan, Andrew, and Daniel, moved to Mount Angel to open Koffee Konnection in 1996.

“At first, I felt like an outsider. Everybody seemed to be related in this town,” Boyd said. He slowly worked his way into people’s lives by helping coach the Little League and becoming an active member of the Mount Angel Chamber of Commerce and the Boosters Club.

Before long, the Boyds came to realize how special Mount Angel was. “Where we lived in California, neighbors didn’t know each other. In Mount Angel, people we hadn’t even met knew us by name,” said Lourre, who works as a tutor and substitute teacher.

The magnanimity of Mount Angel folks became especially evident when the Boyds’ eldest son, Jonathan, died in a motorcycle accident in 1998.

“We found flowers piled from the front of our door all the way to the street corner, where Bochsler Hardware is,” Lourre said. Moreover, the Oktoberfest board members gave the Boyd family use of the Oktoberfest building for the reception following the memorial service free of charge.

“I’ve never seen a greater outpouring of love and concern in any community I’ve lived in,” Prentice said.

Teary-eyed, Prentice said he missed going to work at the Koffee Konnection and all the people he was able to serve. He has been trying to discern if God may be calling him to a new direction.

In any case, the Boyds said they plan to stay in Mount Angel and serve coffee and pastries somewhere in town. “I’m 68 and am feeling the need to slow down,” said Prentice, thinking that lunch may no longer be served when he reopens.

In the meantime, the friends of Koffee Konnection are calling upon the community to help the Boyds recover from the fire and move on.

“We also plan on continuing to be active volunteers in this great community,” Prentice said.