Bozeman Has Highest Praise for Foster Parents

Kitsap’s most well-known foster child, Bremerton Mayor Cary Bozeman, has highest praise for people who take on foster children.

“They’re heroes in my book,” he said.

“You change lives.”

When he was 6, Bozeman, his sister and brother were abandoned by their parents and left in an orphanage.

After two years, he lived with an aunt and uncle and in foster homes all over the place, including Seattle, where he went through three just in high school. 

Bozeman lived out of his ’49 Ford for many months before graduating from Lincoln High School in 1959.

He new saw his father again. He saw his mother a couple of times and lived with her briefly. She had drug and drinking problems, and ended up beaten and killed in Texas.

“I’m a survivor, been on my own since I was 10 years old. No one’s given me money,” said Bozeman, who eventually worked his way through college to graduate from University of Washington.

He went on to devote 30 years to Boys and Girls Clubs, and has a place deep in his heart for the young ones.

“I tell kids, ‘Your life’s not about circumstances; it’s about choices you make,’ ” he said.

“I had a tough life … it made me better.”

— Rachel Pritchett