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OBITUARY DAVID Bigelow BOWES DECEMBER 12, 1933 - MAY 13, 2022
Hat tip: his paid obituary ran in the Washington Post on Sunday, May 22, 2022. It's on page C14. The whole thing is a hoot.
OBITUARY
DAVID Bigelow BOWES
DECEMBER 12, 1933 – MAY 13, 2022
Mr. Bowes, a former Washington correspondent of the St.Louis Post-Dispatch, a one-time vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), an associate editor of the Cincinnati Post, and a contributor to Mid-Atlantic regional magazines, died Friday, May 13, 2022, of natural causes, according to his spouse, Rosemary T. Bowes, PhD., at the age of 88. ... As he lay dying, surrounded by family members, Mr. Bowes listened to muted music of jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, jazz pianist Erroll Garner and Broadway chanteuse Blossom Dearie.
{snip}
Mr. Bowes grew up in a suburb of Toledo, OH, a city of manufacturers and lawyers. His manual dexterity was in the fourteenth percentile so "making things" was out. He considered a career in the law, but found it too much like mathematics-with-words for his comfort. For its part, the University of Michigan Law School found his commitment to clear, graceful English approaching poesy to be inappropriate. Accordingly, he transferred to the university's Rackham Graduate School in pursuit of a master's degree in journalism.
He committed himself to the goal once declared by a World War I foreign correspondent, Richard Harding Davis: "to say new things in an old way and old things in a new way" while always striving for accuracy. His first steep challenge was to apply this objective to the high school dating scene by way of a weekly called The Bee Hive. ... Before earning the M.A., Mr. Bowes studied naval science in Navy ROTC for four years at the University of Virginia while earning a B.A. in English. His sea training was conducted aboard the USS CARPELLOTTI, APD 136, an attack transport. The curriculum ranged from squinting through celestial navigation instruments to aiming concussive gunnery to scouring saltwater toilet chutes known as heads. Mr. Bowes scoured some heads, then volunteered to write a shipboard newsletter.
{snip}
During his Michigan years, Mr. Bowes entered a two-year postgraduate internship administered jointly by Michigan and the esteemed St. Louis Post-Dispatch published by Joseph Pulitzer's successors. He paid minimum tuition to the university; twice a year the department chairman, Prof. Wesley Maurer, visited St. Louis to be certain Mr. Bowes was not being marooned on any particular beat. Mr. Bowes filed copies of his key dispatches monthly for critique by the campus faculty. He was named a University of Michigan Journalism Fellow. ... On his first assignment in St. Louis, he was sent to cover a coroners' inquest for Maye (cq) Trainor, the city's premier madam and whorehouse hostess to Babe Ruth when Ruth's New York Yankees were in town. Later, near the end of a decade in St. Louis, Mr. Bowes arranged for a rare conversation with Dr. William Masters, the acclaimed sex researcher who had been working essentially under cover in that conservative city. But soon thereafter, when the doctor's first book was published worldwide, the Post-Dispatch declined to acknowledge or review it on grounds that "some readers might be offended.” ... It was the first of two occasions on which the paper disappointed Mr. Bowes by not covering stories in as mature a fashion as its East and West coast counterparts. The other occasion was when Mr. Bowes filed a story from a Florida nudist colony. The story was ''spiked" despite its scholarly context. Mr. Bowes had been sent coast to coast to measure cultural change; the headline he chose for this particular essay, given Oh! Calcutta!'s acclaimed run on Broadway, was "Nudism vs. Nudity."
{snip}
DAVID Bigelow BOWES
DECEMBER 12, 1933 – MAY 13, 2022
Mr. Bowes, a former Washington correspondent of the St.Louis Post-Dispatch, a one-time vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), an associate editor of the Cincinnati Post, and a contributor to Mid-Atlantic regional magazines, died Friday, May 13, 2022, of natural causes, according to his spouse, Rosemary T. Bowes, PhD., at the age of 88. ... As he lay dying, surrounded by family members, Mr. Bowes listened to muted music of jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, jazz pianist Erroll Garner and Broadway chanteuse Blossom Dearie.
{snip}
Mr. Bowes grew up in a suburb of Toledo, OH, a city of manufacturers and lawyers. His manual dexterity was in the fourteenth percentile so "making things" was out. He considered a career in the law, but found it too much like mathematics-with-words for his comfort. For its part, the University of Michigan Law School found his commitment to clear, graceful English approaching poesy to be inappropriate. Accordingly, he transferred to the university's Rackham Graduate School in pursuit of a master's degree in journalism.
He committed himself to the goal once declared by a World War I foreign correspondent, Richard Harding Davis: "to say new things in an old way and old things in a new way" while always striving for accuracy. His first steep challenge was to apply this objective to the high school dating scene by way of a weekly called The Bee Hive. ... Before earning the M.A., Mr. Bowes studied naval science in Navy ROTC for four years at the University of Virginia while earning a B.A. in English. His sea training was conducted aboard the USS CARPELLOTTI, APD 136, an attack transport. The curriculum ranged from squinting through celestial navigation instruments to aiming concussive gunnery to scouring saltwater toilet chutes known as heads. Mr. Bowes scoured some heads, then volunteered to write a shipboard newsletter.
{snip}
During his Michigan years, Mr. Bowes entered a two-year postgraduate internship administered jointly by Michigan and the esteemed St. Louis Post-Dispatch published by Joseph Pulitzer's successors. He paid minimum tuition to the university; twice a year the department chairman, Prof. Wesley Maurer, visited St. Louis to be certain Mr. Bowes was not being marooned on any particular beat. Mr. Bowes filed copies of his key dispatches monthly for critique by the campus faculty. He was named a University of Michigan Journalism Fellow. ... On his first assignment in St. Louis, he was sent to cover a coroners' inquest for Maye (cq) Trainor, the city's premier madam and whorehouse hostess to Babe Ruth when Ruth's New York Yankees were in town. Later, near the end of a decade in St. Louis, Mr. Bowes arranged for a rare conversation with Dr. William Masters, the acclaimed sex researcher who had been working essentially under cover in that conservative city. But soon thereafter, when the doctor's first book was published worldwide, the Post-Dispatch declined to acknowledge or review it on grounds that "some readers might be offended.” ... It was the first of two occasions on which the paper disappointed Mr. Bowes by not covering stories in as mature a fashion as its East and West coast counterparts. The other occasion was when Mr. Bowes filed a story from a Florida nudist colony. The story was ''spiked" despite its scholarly context. Mr. Bowes had been sent coast to coast to measure cultural change; the headline he chose for this particular essay, given Oh! Calcutta!'s acclaimed run on Broadway, was "Nudism vs. Nudity."
{snip}