Harry Joseph Lowe, M.D.

  

b. December 21, 1919 Nogales, Arizona
d. November 23, 1999 Arcadia, California

 Born on December 21, 1919, to John Jay 'J.J.' and Lucille (Wren) Lowe in Nogales, Arizona, Harry was the fifth of seven children. (Harry's sister, Lucille, married Jack Chapman Everhart who was the son of Cora Greenlee Everhart.) His father J.J.was Town Marshall and would eventually become Chief of Police of Nogales, and from 1939 to 1958, J.J. was Sheriff of Santa Cruz County. Harry often told stories of his father locking him up in the jail cell when he had misbehaved.

 At age 8 Harry traveled to San Francisco Shriners Hospital with his father to have surgery performed to correct paralysis he had suffered from polio. He recovered fully. The next summer he traveled to Los Angeles as a guest of the Shriners Convention and was proud to wear his authentic cowboy outfit for all to see. Harry was an avid Boy Scout, the first in Nogales to reach the rank of Eagle Scout. He later served as scoutmaster.

 He attended Nogales High School, graduating in 1939, then attended the University of Arizona where he obtained Bachelor and Master of Science degrees. He earned his MD at Johns Hopkins University, where he met his wife, Elaine Leich, a nursing student there. They married in 1947 and began to raise their family.

 Harry went on to take positions at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Texas, and later served in the Army Medical Corps, taking his internship at William Beaumont Army Hospital in El Paso. He served in hospitals in New York and then joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1966 as professor in anesthesiology. The family lived on the south shore area and later in the southern suburbs of Chicago. In 1975 Harry moved his family to southern California where he served at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine until his retirement in 1994. He was a pioneer of closed-system anesthesia, a technique allowing the anesthesiologist to monitor the patient precisely and with a greater degree of safety. He traveled the globe extensively with his wife and family speaking on anesthesia topics. He always carried balloons in his lab coat for making balloon animals for his younger patients.

 Harry always loved visiting family and friends in the Elgin-Sonoita area. He spoke fondly of the rolling grasslands, cattle ranches, desert skies and mountain ranges where he grew up. In his youth he had mastered many, many cowboy campfire songs and happily sang them for all his kids and grandkids. No doubt he is happy at his final resting place at Black Oak.

Written and edited by his son David Wren Lowe.

Click below to return to:
History
A-D
E-H
I-P
Q-Z

SCS 8/8/26