Star Profile

Brian Boger With the financial crisis in full swing, attorney Brian Boger is not saying "I told you so," but he did. He has moved his law practice through real estate and consumer law, mostly, and between the two, he saw the current crisis coming.

Boger was born near Albuquerque, N.M., where his father was stationed at the Army's White Sands missile operations. His mother managed the house. He has an older brother, Bo, who is a management consultant in Chicago.

After spending his first grade in Bordeaux, France, and the next four years in Frankfurt, Germany, Boger returned with his family to Northern Virginia, near Alexandria. His father retired from the Army and re- entered as a civilian at the Pentagon. His mother also worked at the Pentagon as a general's executive assistant.

Boger attended Ft. Hunt High School, which is a little south of Alexandria. He was a defensive back on the varsity, and his future wife was a cheerleader.

The fall after high school graduation had Boger in the freshman class at UVA, Charlottesville. He majored in English, and his focus was on 20C American literature - Hemingway, Fitzgerald, et al.

For fun during college breaks, Boger surfed the shore at Ocean City, Md.

He and his cheerleader, Ellie Russell, married in the summer between Boger's college graduation and his entry into law school at USC.

The Boger couple began having children about the time he finished law school. The oldest is Jayne, a Web designer for Lake Murray Country. She has two daughters, Isabelle (three) and Sydney (one). Next is Tommy, and Greg is the youngest Boger son. Both Tommy and Greg are law students in Charleston.

For the last four sumCmeerrvse, zGareg has worked on , the sport fisherman boat shared between the Columbia- based Bogers and the Russells of Northern Virginia. The combined crew and ownership team is pictured on another page in this edition of The Columbia Star.

While he was in law school and for a short time after, Boger worked for three years in real estate law with Columbia attorney Lewis Cromer. He started his own practice on Richland Street in the fall of 1979.

He is currently located at 1331 Elmwood Ave., about equidistant between Bull and Main Streets. His wife is a pre- school teacher at St. John Neumann Catholic School on Polo Road.

Boger is one of five lawyers in the state in private practice who specialize in consumer advocacy. There are only about 200 such lawyers in the country.

The current financial crisis is a "one- hundredyear event," according to Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Boger agrees. Boger worries what can be expected while real estate values in the country continue to find bottom.

Boger, the English major, is writing a novel, a who- done- it. Based in Shandon, the murder mystery plot has pushed the book past 400 pages, and Boger knows that's too many. He has engaged editors and opinionators, trying to bring the length down to something marketable, which he then plans to publish.

Maybe next Boger can write the story of the continuing saga of the financial crisis, another who- done- it. Boger, the practiced professional, says he knows who.