my father's obituary

My father passed away last April.  This is something I am still processing, and I felt writing a more thorough obituary than the brief online version in the Albuquerque Journal would help me a bit.  That and writing more and more.  

at TCU 1963

Obituary for Fred Allison ‘Buzz’ Rowell

Fred Allison ‘Buzz’ Rowell, age 73, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, passed away April 25, 2016. Born September 11, 1942 in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, he was the only child of Brigadier General Fred Gallagher Rowell and Elizabeth Lucille ‘Bette Lou’ Allison Rowell. General Rowell was stationed in Washington DC after WWII as one of Eisenhower’s aides and later commander of the 111^th Anti-Aircraft Brigade of the New Mexico National Guard.

Buzz was a New Mexico resident for 42 years. He attended New Mexico Military Institute and Texas Christian University (‘63), where he earned a business marketing degree and was a member of and pledge trainer for Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. He was on the ski patrol in Ruidoso at Sierra Blanca Ski area in spring of ‘62.

Buzz was a founding member and officer of the Maverick Region of the Porsche Club of America. In 1964 he joined the SCCA, Sports Car Club of America. After college he bought Pit Stop, a car dealership in Roswell NM selling BMW, MGB and Jaguars.

He owned a Porsche SC 1600 which he later traded for a Gemini Mk2 Formula Junior racecar, one of several rear engine FJs he raced for a racing team he formed for Pit Stop. He also raced an orange Lotus Super 7 and an Elva. President Johnson’s closure of Walker AFB in 1967 spelled the end for the sportscar dealership and he worked for a short time for Bondurant Insurance Agency.

In 1969 he moved his family to El Paso to join the sales force for Xerox, and was chosen as one of their top salesmen earning a trip to Acapulco.  At Xerox he met Ben Miller Jr, and they joined with his close school friend from NMMI, (former judge) Pat O’Rourke to start the Ben Miller Boot Company.  As Sales Manager he traveled a great deal in the Southwest. In 1972 the boot company was sold and he moved his family to Phoenix to sales rep for Pioneer Western Wear.

Buzz moved to Santa Fe a short time later where he continued to be a successful sales person and was very prominent in the western and boot industries. He was also a real estate agent in Santa Fe and owned a landscaping company, Edenscape Landscaping. 

           

An avid nature lover, he often skied, sailed, backpacked, hiked and ran the trails and backcountry of New Mexico.

He is survived by four children: Daughters Mary Allison Tierney and Kirsten Rowell, their mother Janel Gary Larson; Sons Christian Rowell and William Rowell, their mother Rosemary Rowell. Also survived by six Grandchildren: Jack, Mark, Amelia, Oliver, Simone and Daisy; and cousins, Seth Orell and Pat Orell.

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..and yet another launch party!

Write On, Mamas! announce our newborn Anthology

Mamas Write, (Bittersweet Press) 29 poignant, gritty and funny essays on how mothering shaped us as writers, how we make time to write, memorable parenting moments and moreby the Write On Mamas

we've added a new launch party:

April 24th 7 pm at Diesel books Oakland

spoiler alert: my essay's about one of my kids

Write On Mamas are a group of more than 40 writing moms (and one dad) who meet online and in person to read, write, revise, and share. Members are published authors, journalists, bloggers, and poets, as well as those beginning their writing journey. Based primarily in Northern California, Write On Mamas also hail from Oregon, Minnesota, Maryland, and Calgary.

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Write On, Mamas! announce our newborn Anthology

Mamas Write, (Bittersweet Press)
29 essays by the Write On, Mamas! 

It's been a long and thoughtful gestation, and our due date is imminent.  Deep cleansing breath, and.......

Sunday, April 27 (3 PM) at Napa Bookmine

and

Sunday, May 4 (7 PM) at Book Passage Corte Madera

we get to follow Ayelet Waldman and Andrew Sean Greer!  OMG.

Join us!
Mary Allison Tierney's essay The Gingerdreadman is included in the anthology Mamas Write, available at Amazon, or your local independent bookshop.

and stay tuned for the A to Z challenge......

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T is for Transitions

Granny and Paw Paw’s yellow brick two bedroom home was built in the 1940's in a nice Ft. Worth neighborhood near the TCU campus, and was sold when Granny moved into an assisted living home nearer my aunt and uncle. Granny was widowed in her 70’s, and lived there several more years before eventually moving into the assisted living residence, then a nursing home.  Her quality of life and dependence on others swiftly see-sawing in opposite directions. 

I stayed with Granny often when I was a baby, while my mother finished her BA at TCU.  I visited the house every summer as a kid, traveling from Roswell, El Paso and later Phoenix. I even moved back in for a few months during my college transition year. The smell of that house lingers in my memory: the cold mildew of the unfinished basement combined with Paw Paw’s gold bond talc powder and closet moth balls. The shush sound the front door made when it was opened, rubbing against the plush carpet and the squeak of the brass plate mail slot in the door.  The sticky crackle of the linoleum underfoot in the tiny yellow kitchen. The rotten dried husks of pecans on the thin border of concrete that framed the back yard  where Paw Paw would chip and putt golf balls endlessly. 


Granny’s pinktiled bathroom vanity had deep drawers filled with stacks of dial deodorant soap and multiple tubes of Pepsodent toothpaste, bought on triple coupon day at Minyards Market.  Those packaged soaps are now over 30 years old. I saw them last thanksgiving in my aunt’s bathroom drawer along with Granny's steel comb with a pick end handle. Attached was a single grey hair. 

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S is for Swimming Pool

I worked as the fill-in life guard the summer I was 15.  It’s a small Texas town, and then it was the only public pool. It was outdoors on the old high school campus sandwiched between the gymnasium and the original football field. My two cousins were the main life guards, and I went to the pool with them each day to learn the ropes, as the elder was getting married that summer, and I was to be her replacement. The public pool was soon to be run by a 15 and 17 year old.

A couple details about that summer job haunt me today, as a mother and as a responsible person.  First off, I was not certified by any agency to be a lifeguard. Nepotism at its finest. I had the general idea, CPR wise, and I had a whistle.  Also there were no adults in charge, to speak of.  The football coach, in high waisted nylon shorts and knee high white socks, dropped by on occasion, probably because he was getting a few extra bucks for running the pool. And it was near the weight room where the football players worked out.  Another was we were paid daily right out of the till, so if it was a slow day, we closed the pool early so we could make it worth our while to be there.  My cousin checked the PH of the water, or whatever that kit with the colored drops was.  Occasionally the water level was too low so we put a hose in.  I know there were bags of chemicals we dumped in from time to time.

We had the key to the doors and the padlocked plywood cover for the admission window that covered the front of the cinderblock building that served as snack bar, and twin changing rooms and bathrooms.  I cannot remember them ever being cleaned, just hosed down.  There was never toilet paper and the concrete floor was always wet and hopping with crickets.  It was a dollar admission and we purchased bulk snacks, zingers, twinkies, chips then sold them for profit.  Swimmers could get a wire basket from the snack bar but there was no place to stash it.

I have a painful image of a rough passel of scruffy kids in cutoffs and t-shirts standing on the asphalt in the burning Texas sunshine, having been dropped by mom and given a buck each. We opened at 1 PM, and I vividly remember a couple of them didn’t have shoes and were hopping from foot to foot, waiting for us.  Mothers were often late and pissed off, screeching into the parking lot in rattling faded station wagons with the windows down, smoking a cigarette and her hair in sponge rollers.  Lots of kids road their bikes and left them laying outside the fence, never needing to worry that they’d be stolen.

This was mostly an extreme babysitting job with fighting siblings, water, and two diving boards. There was one giant football player who went off the high dive and sunk.  We had to both go in after him.  We gave time outs for pushing and dunking. We yelled at a kid named Dwayne a lot. 

At the end of my summer adventure at the pool, I had learned how to French braid my own hair, had snagged a kinda-sorta summer boyfriend and I had a bitchin’ tan. For me those were all firsts plu I had a Styrofoam Sonic slushie cup stuffed with one dollar bills

At the end of summer the pool was closed then totally removed some years later.  A big Corporate Wellness Center with an indoor Aquatic Center opened at the new hospital across town. Many more people now have their own backyard pools I guess. A patch of brown grass has replaced the entirety of the old public pool and snack shack, and the space looks impossibly small.

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Training Day

My first bra was a hand-me-down.  I have three older female cousins and I’ll never know with whom this one originated, but I do know that it didn’t fit.  My Auntie Jo told me that it was inappropriate for a girl my age to not wear a bra and since I was under her care deep in the heart of Texas for the summer of 1977,  my time had come.  My mother didn’t wear one, so what did I know?

The bra was white cotton, originally. Now grayish with lumpy cups from too many washings.  It felt like cardboard under my t-shirt and the straps pulled on my sunburn. And it itched.

Riding a bicycle barefoot on the country roads in Texas in the summer had been a liberating feeling.  But with this new-to-me recycled bra I felt constricted.  I couldn’t lift my arms without it riding up and then I had to stop the bike and tug it down.  I was always tugging and adjusting and now I was completely self-conscious.  Did it show through my shirt?  The easy freedom of summer had hit a lumpy cotton wall.

Once I was back home, my bra went missing the morning after a birthday sleepover.  The birthday girl was a pain in the ass and had taken it out of my overnight bag.  She told me she was going to hang it on the door of our classroom at school on Monday morning. Never underestimate the psychological torture of being a seventh grade girl. I got to school early to stake out the door.  She didn’t make good on the threat, but she never returned the bra.

I had done some research by this point and I had found that Danskin made a bra that I wanted. Sold in dance stores, this was the precursor to today’s jog-bra. No hooks. No lumpy cups or pinchy straps - I could move!  

With the exception of a brief tawdry fling with Victoria’s Secret in the 1980’s, (I was living in LA, and thus, defenseless.  I even got a membership to Trashy Lingerie with a friend who I will not name, but she knows who she is),  I stayed loyal to the same pullover style until the Mom years.  After breastfeeding three ravenous babies, I self promoted to underwire with strategic padding, and was professionally fitted by one of the blessed Nordstrom bra wizards.  These women are amazing.  They tricked me out with bras that actually fit and were pretty.  And expensive. 

2008

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