Willard Lowery (1876-1959)

LOWERY, DRING, SEBA, PUTNAM, HESSE, WILSON

Posted By: jane austin (email)
Date: 6/12/2021 at 21:05:24

Willard Lowery, brother of J.J. Lowery and a former Sanborn resident, passed away Thursday morning, July 2, at the home of his son Ron at Arnolds Park.

Mer. Lowery had been in the Spirit Lake Hospital recovering from an injury suffered ten days previous but was taken home from the hospital the night before his death.

Funeral services were held at the Milford Funeral Home Monday at 2:00 p.m. with burial at Roseland Cemetery at Sanborn.

Relatives attending from here were Mr. and Mrs. J.J. Lowery and daughter Joyce, and Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lowery, Captain John Lowery of Elsworth AF Base and Mrs. Ida Putnam of Hartley accompanied the others to Milford for the services.

An obituary will be published next week.

Sanborn (Iowa) Pioneer, 9 Jul 1959, pg. 1
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Willard Marion Lowery was born on a farm near Parkersbeurg, Iowa, December 23, 1876, the oldest child of Robert Francis and Angeline Dring Lowery. The family moved to Sanborn in 1891, where Willard and his father ran the creamery. Later, he became a barber, selling out to his brother, J.J. Lowery in 1907 and started another shop in Everly, which he sold to his brother George. He began building houses about 1910 and continued his work as a carpenter and contractor until his death, building over thirty houses in Sanborn alone.

On September 23, 1903, he married Emma Dorothea Seba of Sanborn and to them three children wer born: Charolotte M. Lowery, now of Los Angeles, California, Robert Roy Lowery, now of Arnolds Park, and Myrl M. Lowery, now or Kerman, California.

In the summer of 1923, the family moved to Sioux City for four years, moving in the spring of 1927 to their farm seven miles south of Harris, where Mr. Lowery continued his carpentry part time in addition to farming with the aid of his two sons. In 1935, he with his wife and older son, Roy, moved to Arnolds Park, where he continued to reside until the time of his death.

Mr. Lowery was active and in good health, spending his winters in California and his summers in Arnolds Park, dividing his time there between working and enjoying visits from his friends and relatives.

On June 28 of this year, he was working on a cottage at Wahpeton on the west shore of Lake Okoboji, and had moved back a plank at one end of the staging to make room temporarily for some other workers. Forgetting to replace the plank, he began the first row of shingling and stepped of the staging when he came to the misplaced plank. He was taken to the Dickenson County Memorial hospital, where x-rays showed a broken pelvis. He was removed for recovery to the home of his son, R.R. Lowery in Arnolds Park on July 1st, and on the morning of July 2, 1959, he suddenly died from cardiac failure.

Funeral services were held Monday afternoon, July 6, at the Leyson Funeral Home in Milford, with graveside services at the Roseland Cemetery, at Sanborn.

Besides his widow and three children, he leaves five grandchildren: Newkirk LeRoi, Marlys Dianne, and Kenton Zane of Arnolds Park, and Mylo Myrl, and Mark Jay of Kerman, California; one sister, Mrs. Ida Putname of Hartley; one brother, John Jay Lowery of Sanborn; two aunts, Mrs. Vina Hesse of Dumont and Mrs. Myrta Wilson of Cedar Falls; and many nieces, nephews, cousins, and friends.

It took an unfortunate accident to bring to a sudden end this full life applied with great interest and energy for the last half century to building and carpentry; and with increasingly humourous appreciation of it all for the whole 82 years, 6 months, and 9 days.

Sanborn (Iowa) Pionner, 16 Jul 1959, pg 4