Travis Jackson Bollen slipped the surly bonds of this earth on Tuesday, July 14, 2026, with the hope of heaven fixed firmly in his heart. He lived a full 93 years, of which I knew him as Dad for 46. We shared service in the Navy, our Christian faith, and the love of my mother.

Travis was born in 1932 in Friendship, Arkansas to Clardy and Lura Bollen, being the 5th of 10 siblings and eldest son. It was the height of the Great Depression and he picked cotton as a child to contribute his meager wages to sustaining the family. Like The Grapes of Wrath, the family packed up a truck and moved to a public housing unit in California in 1942, where his father took work building Liberty Ships for the Kaiser shipyard in Long Beach. Travis sold newspapers and learned some Spanish eating at local taquerias in Los Angeles. In 1952 he enlisted in the Navy and served on the flightdecks of the U.S.S. Princeton and U.S.S. Boxer off the coast of Japan as a plane handler during the Korean War. His marriage to Myra Driskill in 1954 brought him one adopted daughter, Myra, and later added three more children: Terry, Sam, and Nikki. Despite being raised by a "hard nosed Baptist" father and "strong Pentecostal" mother, Travis did not receive Jesus as Lord of his life until the age of 32, after his marriage had suffered beyond the point of repair. The shame of his divorce in 1977 left him looking to hide in a big church, and thus he eventually came to First Evangelical Free Church of Fullerton under the Ministry of Charles Swindoll.

Dad worked for many years as a piece-worker with his brother-in-law at Blair Metal Polishing. In the years just before retirement in 2008 at the tender age of 75, he supervised college campus bus drivers in downtown Los Angeles. But his heart was in another line of work that he would never have guessed would fall to him.

In 1978, Ken Bemis, the pastor of the Single Parents Fellowship (SPF) at EV Free, began mentoring Travis and asked him and another single parent, Jeanette Kiefer, to assist him as lay leaders, counselors, curriculum developers, and teachers of this church group comprising several hundred widowed and divorced parents and their children. A relationship flourished as they ministered together, and Ken married Travis and Jeanette on June 28th, 1980. This added Jeanette's three sons--Todd, David, and Scott--to this Brady Bunch family. SPF was a cornerstone of their family activities, and Travis and Jeanette served as class instructors, conference speakers, executive coordinators, and executive board members for 17 years while raising this second family. They later together launched Acts of Kindness, a ministry to the homeless in Fullerton, California.

Travis leaves a legacy of 7 children, 14 grandchildren, 23 great-grandchildren, and 1 great-great-grandson. He is survived by younger brother Kenneth O'Neil Bollen.

Travis will be buried in Riverside National Cemetery in the same plot as his wife Jeanette, who succumbed to cancer in 2020. Your chance to meet with friends and relatives and say goodbye will be Monday, August 3rd. We have scheduled a viewing at Thomas Miller Mortuary at 9-10 am and a shelter service with military honors at Riverside National Cemetery at 1130 am. It is a 45-60 min drive between the two sites. We will send updates as we have more details.

-Todd Kiefer
kieferta@gmail.com
601-692-6746