Ten years ago this month, Bob Lowry placed a handwritten note on my desk. It wasn’t the first time he did this inside the Post-Tribune office. It was his quiet way of tapping me on the shoulder.
His note mentioned an upcoming Hobart Chamber of Commerce luncheon and the possibility of me serving as its guest speaker. As Lowry knew, my initial reaction would be hesitance. Public speaking of any kind, especially earlier in my writing career, caused anxiety that got worse until I started speaking. And then I never shut up.
Lowry knew this as well.
“Ah, you’ll be fine,” he told me outside the building during his cigarette break.
We had our best conversations during these breaks. He would take long drags of a cigarette with one hand while waving his other hand through puffs of smoke. I hated the secondhand smell. I loved the firsthand exchanges with Lowry, an advertising account executive who never acted like an executive.
“OK, sure Bob, I’ll be there,” I told him.
“Thanks, Jer!” he replied with a fast handshake.
Since we met in 2006, when I began writing for the Post-Tribune, Lowry gave me firm handshakes, honest smiles and kind words. Once in a while, as a joke, he’d also offer me a cigarette even though he knew I didn’t smoke.
“If you start now, it would be easy to kick the habit,” he’d quip with a laugh.
Lowry showed me kindness since our first chat outside the old Merrillville office. I was hustling in to write a column on deadline. He was outside the rear door serving as an unofficial greeter. I can’t remember him not having a kind word to say every time I saw him. It’s easy to forget when someone tells you something stupid or ignorant or mean-spirited. It’s not easy, nor should it be, to forget when someone shows you kindness. Lowry was always kind, to me and everyone else.
I recalled this while reading Lowry’s obituary earlier this week. He died Aug. 1. He was 64.
“He enjoyed fishing and reading,” his obit stated.
Lowry, a Gary native who lived in Hobart, also worked as a bartender at the Slovak Club, then as court security for the Lake County Sheriff’s Department. His obit, though, felt incomplete to me. I couldn’t figure out why as I stared at his photo and it quietly stared back. Something was different, something was off. And then it came to me. He wasn’t smiling.
This realization coaxed a smile from me, just as Lowry had done whenever we chatted.
“Rest easy and thank you for your friendship,” said Sandy Pero, one of his former Post-Tribune co-workers who retired in 2015. “Remembering your co-worker after so many years is easy when they are great people like Bob. His love of fishing, his love of cars, his furry companion, his big heart, and his love for Pam.”
Pamela Anguiano, his longtime companion, survived him, along with many other family members.
“Bob always loved hearing and telling a good joke,” recalled Randy Guernsey, of Hobart, a friend of Lowry’s for more than 40 years. “He was always a gentleman. Bob enjoyed people, and I believe that’s why he enjoyed being a bartender part-time, for the social aspect.”
Rich Cains, a former Post-Tribune advertising executive, remembers Lowry as a loyal sports enthusiast and a die-hard fan of Duke basketball.
“Bob often cleaned out my wallet come March Madness,” said Cains, who hired Lowry for his department. “Bob worked the Hobart territory, primarily selling to many of the mom-and-pop businesses. He was a personal acquaintance to many of these folks, which made his Hobart Brickie contacts good for his book of business.”
Pero, who was at the newspaper for 45 years, worked with Lowry for several years on a Bass Pro fishing event. He often asked me to write about it, though knowing my ignorance about fishing. “Bob, I can’t even hook a can of tuna fish,” I’d joke.
“I can teach you,” he’d reply.
Pero said, “There was nobody who knew more about fishing waters than Bob.”
Lowry never fished for compliments about his job. It’s a career I could never do, as I often told him.
“I couldn’t sell a life preserver to a drowning fisherman,” I once joked.
“Oh, Jerry,” Lowry replied in between puffs. “Sure you could.”
“Oh, Bob,” I said to myself when I first saw his obituary.
His death surprised me. I hadn’t seen him in years. And then — poof — he’s gone. Shame on me.
As a Chicago Tribune colleague mentioned during a recent meeting, “The future keeps getting shorter.”
He was talking about his career, not his life. But sometimes the two are interwoven like thread in a business suit. We tend to think that our career will be our lasting legacy when, in fact, it’s usually our personality that people remember most. Or our gestures to others, like Lowry’s gestures of kindness.
His jobs were only vessels for his upbeat spirit. Such a legacy not only can outlast us, it can define us, up until our last gestures and final breath. As the novelist John Updike once wrote, “We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.”
Lowry’s legacy of goodness will survive his death.
“We will forever smile when we think of you, Bob,” Pero said Wednesday night after his wake.
Lowry’s funeral service was Thursday at Rees Funeral Home in Hobart, a community he knew like the back of his hidden fishing spots. (Online condolences can be shared with the family at www.reesfuneralhomes.com.)
I guess today’s column is my way of leaving Lowry a note of gratitude on his desk. Thank you for your kindheartedness, Bob. Like you, it won’t be forgotten.
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