It's pretty relaxing and about as much as I can handle
with my brain being fried !
This is my late father Cecil V. Lowe. What a character. This will become knitting related later in the story ! He was waiting for the bus one day and a Mercer Island Reporter photographer stopped to take his picture as he thought he had quite the unique face. He wanted to be Scottish in the worst way though I have yet to prove it thru my genealogy research but that didn't stop him.
The surname Lowe is associated with the clan MacLaren so he had kilts made in that tartan and learned to play the bagpipes. He loved music and also played the violin, mandolin, dulcimer, and accordion. He took all five of us kids to our music lessons and stayed at every one of them so he could listen and learn. He also loved his hobbies of wood carving, blacksmithing, clay sculpture, and stained glass. He was quick with a story, quote, quip, joke, you name it. He loved to wear his tam, bad polyester suits, and Swedish clogs-a unique look !
Years ago I tried spinning some yarn on my great grandmother's flax wheel and knit him a tam. Well, not knowing anything about spinning, the yarn was so tightly wound I broke a needle. That turned into a pillow ! I knit him a pair of socks with the Swedish word for father " Far " into the heel. He quipped " Does that mean you think your father is a heel ? " He wore that pair out. He died too young in 1984 and we still miss him terribly.
He was the Special Education Director for Bellevue Public Schools. He helped Governor Dan Evans with the Equal Education For All bill in the 70's I believe..
Around 1988 a woman named Chris Heaton wanted to build a playground/park especially for handicapped children. When she proposed this to the school district people kept telling her it would be a great memorial for my father and told many "Cec stories". She said he sounded like a gruff bear of a man with a marshmallow heart. She envisioned a statue of him as a bear playing the bagpipes, wearing a tam with glasses. It was made by Washington State Artist Richard Beyer who is locally famous at least, for the statues " Waiting for the Interurban" in Fremont. He did a wonderful job depicting our father. The little bear cubs represent the kids who were in the program and had passed. The one cub is holding it's paw in a typical Down's Syndrome way. The park is located in front of Sherwood Forest Elementary School on the Eastside. It's called the Cecil V. Lowe Memorial Park -For Cec and his kids.
I really liked Mr. Beyer's work before so it was wonderful to have him create this. There is a book about him called " The Art People Love - Stories of Richard S. Beyer's Life and his Sculpture". One of these days I'm going to go try and find most of the ones in the book and see them for myself.
My Dad had a sign outside his office that said " If I had to live my life over again I wouldn't have the strength ". Some days I feel that way, but other days it seems like a rather amusing anecdote. He had his faults to be sure as we all do, but I'm thankful for the unique and interesting upbringing this provided me.
On the Scottish theme this picture came from the Knitting Zone e-newletter. It is very lovely and if I didn't have so many projects already it would be fun to try.
2 comments:
Karin, I like your blog. You focus on positive things. The photo of your father was intriguing to me. He reminds me of many of my uncles on my mother's side, surname, Low, from Alberta Canada. Our Lows came from Scotland. I was in Scotland several years ago and encountered a guide who reminded me of the same uncles I spoke of. On closer inspection, his name was James Low. We visited for a bit, and his thinking was that the Lows and Lowes all originated from Germany, but that several Low(e)s had been brought to Scotland to serve as overseers for landholders and the family had eventually taken root in Scotland. In German the name means "lion."
Thanks for the information on the Low's. That's very interesting.
I think our line used Low up until the latter 1800's. They were in Tennessee and I haven't been able to get very far back.
I'm tempted to do the Low/Lowe DNA
project.
Take care.
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