Recipes for Living Dr. Thomas Lower

My home town was originally Parnell in eastern Iowa. The town was founded by Charles Stuart Parnell, head of an Irish Roman Catholic family, and that heritage has remained. My parents, Joseph and Laurine Lower, were of that tradition. They farmed just outside Parnell, and were parents of 13 children. My father was a veteran of World War II. He had gone in with the troops on D-Day, and proceeded through France and Germany. In our area, he was considered a war hero. My mother had been the valedictorian in her high school class. Granted that it was a class of only about 15 kids, nevertheless, it was an achievement worthy of note. I had two older sisters. One died of pneumonia at age four. Of my brothers, one died in a motor vehicle accident at the age of 19. The rest live everywhere from Spain, to Connecticut, to Las Vegas, to eastern Iowa. I have dozens of first cousins, uncles and aunts.

I was brought up in the Catholic faith and served as an altar boy. Even though I am not a practicing Catholic, I still believe what I was taught. The grade school I attended in Parnell was the last town in Iowa, other than Catholic schools, where nuns taught classes. Their influence was strong throughout my childhood.

One of the predominate interests in my life has been sports. Beginning when I was seven or eight years old, my involvement followed the seasons - football, basketball, and baseball year round. This continued in high school and college, which I attended on a football scholarship, and played all four years. I would like to have been a professional athlete, but didn't have the ability to make it at that level. I had to settle for something else and knew that wouldn't be farming. As the oldest son, a lot pertaining to farm work was expected of me, and I knew I didn’t want to live on a farm all my life.

The four years in high school were good years. I had lots of friends and my interest in sports was intensified by our excellent teams. We were undefeated in football in my senior year and we had a 20-1 record in basketball. When class awards were given, I received the one for outstanding athlete. I graduated in 1965 from Williamsburg High School.

I attended Grinnell College for four years, and earned a BA with a major in biology and a minor in chemistry. I was married following my junior year. On December 29, our team played in a basketball tournament in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In the last second of the second half, I went for a jump shot, and made the basket that won the game. On that same day my son Michael was born.

My wife was from New York City, which I had visited and fallen in love with. We had picnics in Central Park, attended events at Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden, which is Des Moines Veterans Auditorium on a larger scale. I liked the city so much that we held our wedding there in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. After I graduated from college, we packed up and went to New York City, where I found my first job as electron microsposcopist, doing medical research in Brooklyn. I happened to meet a fellow who had an oceanography development corporation in West Palm Beach, Florida. He offered me a job, so my wife, son, and I headed for sunny Florida, in the dead of a New York winter.

I had been making application to medical and dental schools, and when I was accepted at the University of Iowa, I quit my job and we headed for Iowa City, where I started dental school. From the first day, I absolutely detested dental school, even though it took 1 1/2years to quit. I called the fellow in Florida and went back to work managing a restaurant. Previously I had worked as an in house construction manager, renting office space, supervising renovation, and generally making tenants happy.

After four months, I was accepted by the School of Osteopathy in Des Moines and quit again. I moved my wife, son, and myself back to Iowa to attend the school, graduating in 1975 with a degree in Osteopathic Surgery. This was an overall curriculum, within which there was a variety of specializing fields. The practice has changed a great deal over the years and I am pleased to have chosen the one of general diagnosis and prescribed remedy.

That same year my wife and I decided to go our separate ways, and shortly thereafter I married someone who had been in the nursing profession. I finished my internship in 1976, and took my first job in Grinnell. Approximately eight or nine months later, my employers and I couldn't agree on the terms of our contract so we parted and I practiced in Des Moines for three years.

I always felt badly about not having gone into the service. When I graduated from college the draft was a lottery and my pick was number 151. While I was in Florida, I was called to the induction center in Coral Gables. I expected to be in the Army soon, but during my physical, I was asked if I had ever had a seizure. I had to admit to having one when I was 10 or 11 years old and even though I never had another, I was disqualified and was ranked 4F, physically unfit for the service. Nevertheless, I wasn’t satisfied that I had done my duty, and I enlisted in the Army Medical Corps. I served for 2 1/2 years in West Germany. After getting out of service, I went into medical practice in Corning, Iowa and felt there were opportunities elsewhere. I came to Osceola and been here ever since.

Over the course of years, I had four more children. At the present time, Michael is a graduate of the University of North Carolina, a stock broker living in Charlotte. Joe is a fork lift operator, employed by Williamsburg Manufacturing Company. Two sons, Thomas and Daniel, have yet to find their vocation. Tom went to Iowa State University for 3 ½ years, and is now taking a few courses and doing odd jobs. Dan finished high school, lives in Iowa City, and is working for a bread company. My daughter Erin graduated from Iowa State University with a degree in Management Information Services and is employed by Rain and Hail Insurance in Des Moines.

My second wife and I divorced in 1991, and never having learned my lesson, I married a third time in 1999. Ceree and I met in Osceola. She was part owner of a convenience store. We kept company a number of years before we married. Ceree has two daughters from a prior marriage. Jill finished her Master's degree in psychology and is beginning to work toward her doctorate. Jennifer lives in Wichita, Kansas. She and her husband, Hubert Zey, have two children - Miranda and Hugh. Hubert (Hugh) is a chemical engineer employed by Koch Company.

I have enjoyed traveling through the years. While I was in Germany, we traveled around the country, and visited Sweden, Denmark, Liechtenstein, Monaco, France, Switzerland, and Italy. There were several reasons why we chose to drive - American service people had a break on gasoline, and it was very easy to get around.

Ceree and I have been on trips to Europe, including Italy, Switzerland, France, Ireland, and any number of stopping points when we took cruises in the Caribbean. My son Joe and I went alone together to London and had an enjoyable time.

But my primary enjoyment is my work For my first seven years in Osceola, I didn’t take a vacation. I can think of only two or three occasions when I was out of town longer than few hours. I was basically on call 24 hours a day. Several changes have occurred which made a difference. We no longer do obstetrics, and the hospital is providing a great deal of coverage, which was not the case some years ago. Typically my work day is 10 hours long - from 8:00a.m to 6:00p.m. and on Wednesdays, 8:00a.m. to 2:00 or 3:00p.m. I seldom eat lunch but use that hour to catch up on morning phone calls and see hospital patients. I also see them following my afternoon office hours.

There are several ways that I believe our society could be improved. I would like to see people more responsible for their own health care, and not expect the government to be all things to them, taking care of every single want and need. I can look back to how things were when I was growing up, how many more things are expected from the government that weren't considered rights or entitlements 30 or 40 years ago. I believe people need to plan ahead, to be responsible for their own retirement and not put the responsibility on children and grandchildren. There is much being said now about privacy, but we have always followed those principles. We have never revealed physical conditions, medical data, or finances, beyond persons immediately involved.

If I were to reduce my "recipe for living" to a word, it would be perseverance. Life throws us lots of curves and we just need to keep plugging away.