Bowers, Otis

BEACH, BOWERS

Posted By: Anne Hermann (email)
Date: 2/28/2008 at 07:34:37

Jackson Sentinel, Centennial Edition-1938.

FAMOUS MINSTREL HAS UNMARKED GRAVE IN MT. HOPE CEMETERY.

Otis Bowers, known from coast to coast by theatre goers of the late 80’s and 90’s as the junior member of the once-famous minstrel team of Beach and Bowers, became a permanent “resident” of Maquoketa, in January, 1908.

In that year the mimic died in Davenport, with 27 cents in his pocket, and arrangements were made to bury him there in potter’s field. However, a former business associate and brother Elk, F. C. Gregory of Maquoketa, heard of his death, bought a casket and a lot, and had the body laid to rest in Mount Hope Cemetery.

Bowers was once wealthy, with friends, diamonds and race horses. He and his partner spent money lavishly to make their act one of pleasure to their audience. But Fortune is fickle, and she turned away. Wealth fled; his friends deserted, health failed; diamonds and horses were sold; and from spangled scenery and velvet trappings, Otis Bowers descended until he played the mimic in a street carnival tent.

In the early days, Omer T. “Buster” Henry of Maquoketa was a member of the minstrel troupe, and for one season, Matt Luckiesh, now internationally famous authority on lighting, trouped with the company as a musician. So it is on each Memorial Day a single flower is laid on the grave of this man who once made thousands forget their trouble and worries, temporarily, as they watched his laugh giving performances. “Buster” has never forgotten to place a flower of memory on the mimic’s resting place, in the more than 30 years that Bowers’ body has lain in an unmarked grave in Mount Hope Cemetery.