Longtime ACBL president Bonekemper loved the Quakertown Blazers

Like the first sighting of a robin, the grass starting to grow and turn a deeper shade of green, or the first flower blooming in the backyard, Tom Bonekemper's call to me each year was a sign spring was here.

Bonekemper would call me every May for a period of at least 10 years to get together to talk about the Atlantic Collegiate Baseball League. He'd often coordinate a meeting at a local restaurant that would make it easy for me to get information on the ACBL teams in the area.

Not too long ago there was three of them — the Allentown Railers, the Lehigh Valley Catz and Bonekemper's Quakertown Blazers. Often the other guys would leave and Bonekemper and I would still be talking. We'd go from the ACBL to the state of the newspaper industry to world affairs to things happening in Quakertown and then eventually get back to baseball.

With Bonekemper, it was always about baseball in the end. He loved the game, he loved following players, and he loved to give me anecdotes about past stars and those who he thought were on the rise. He seemed to know every top player at every high school in the Lehigh Valley region and every college player on the East Coast and yet was still quite adept at following major league baseball, the minor leagues and even what all of the other teams in his beloved ACBL had, not to mention what ACBL alumni were doing throughout the landscape of pro ball.

For a variety of reasons, we no longer covered the Quakertown Blazers and the ACBL the way we once did when the Allentown Wings became the Quakertown Blazers in 1984 thanks to the efforts of Tom and his brother George Bonekemper.

While we couldn't do the things we once did back when The Morning Call had its own Quakertown office, I always found time for Tom Bonekemper and wanted to do what I could for him because in just a 15-minute conversation you could tell how much he loved the game of baseball and the kids who played it.

To many he was known as a renowned doctor. According to his obituary, he was on the staffs of Quakertown and Grand View hospitals while serving the Upper Perkiomen Valley in private practice from 1972-1976. I knew of his strong support of the military and it was his desire to help veterans that led to him becoming the Chief Medical Officer of the VA Outpatient Clinic in Allentown where he served for 20 years.

During our annual get-togethers, Bonekemper would decry how the health insurance industry was going, but then the conversation would get back to baseball. Quakertown Blazers baseball in particular. His love for Quakertown Memorial Park, the Blazers home, was so evident that I began to think of him as simply "Mr. Quakertown."

But his concern for the game extended well past the Quakertown border. A 1960 North Penn High School graduate, Bonekemper was the ACBL president for an amazing 26-year period from 1994 to 2020. He won all kinds of regional and national awards for his contributions to baseball and was well-respected by baseball people at virtually every level.

I knew when I didn't hear from him this May that his health was failing. I had checked with people like DeSales baseball coach Tim Neiman, the former Quakertown Legion manager, and DeSales announcer Joe Moskal, who also did some PA work with the Blazers, and they said Tom wasn't doing well.

I didn't want to believe it. I thought for sure I would make a trip to Quakertown for some interviews this summer, maybe even on the Fourth of July, and he'd be there, hand extended, smile on his face, to welcome me as he always did.

Sadly, Bonekemper died on June 28 at the age of 79 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Quakertown Memorial Park, the Blazers, the ACBL, and local baseball lost once of its most staunch advocates. He will be missed.