By DON CARTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Issaquah's alpine setting attracted the late Julius Boehm. The Austrian candymaker left a legacy of interesting architecture, elegant chocolates, athletics and culture.

Displaced from his homeland by World War II, Boehm started a chocolate shop in Seattle during the 1940s. He built his chalet-styled Issaquah factory and adjacent Alpine chapel replica during the next decade.

Boehm -- an enthusiastic mountaineer, swimmer and lover of classical music -- taught several generations of Issaquah residents to ski. He also subsidized youth sports teams, sent busloads of students to cultural events in Seattle and taught swimming. The community swimming pool now bears his name.

"He would also buy rows of seats for the symphony and opera, and give them to his employees and friends," says Joanne Garbusjuk, a Boehm company employee since 1976. "It was because of him that I went to the opera for the first time."

Boehm died in 1981, two years after he set what was then a record for being the oldest person to climb Mount Rainier. He was 80 at the time.

Before his death, Boehm set up a corporation so his candy factory would continue operations under ownership of a number of friends and employees.