JEAN ANN LOWER
July 30, 1953 to July 30, 2003
A MEMORIAM FOR A LADY
by regular OpEdNews contributor Gerry Lower
Jean Ann (Schanhofer) Lower, 50, of Keystone, South Dakota , died
Wednesday, July 30, 2003 on the morning of her 50th birthday at her
parent's home in Sparta, Wisconsin.
She was born July 30, 1953 to John and Frances Schanhofer in Sparta. She
grew up in the Sparta area and graduated from Sparta High School. She
married Dennis Boldon in 1978 and they had one son, Bo John Boldon,
currently of Saux City, Wisconsin.
She later married Dr. Gerald M. Lower, Jr., a molecular oncologist and
medical ethicist at the University of Wisconsin Medical School. They were
married in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin and they lived together for 18
years in Bell Center, southwestern Wisconsin's apple orchard country.
Their home in Bell Center was built in 1867 as Crawford County's first
school house, remodeled into a home with greenhouse and gardens. Jean
found employment in the area as a photographer for the Kickapoo Scout
newspaper, a certified Day Care teacher in Viroqua, a computer-aided
catalog designer for Pettit Sporting Goods, and the Village Clerk of both
Gays Mills and Bell Center, Wisconsin. She excelled at hand crafts,
down-home cooking (extraordinary apple pie crusts), and she loved
gardening (sweet corn and Kennebec cultivars) and growing flowers
(nocturnal flowering nicotine). Jean and Gerald had two children together,
Kalen Hans Lower, 19, and Kelly Jean Lower, 17.
Jean and her family moved to the Black Hills and the Etta Camp suburbs of
Keystone in February of 1996 where Jean worked her way up to Manager of
the Kelly Inn (now the Rushmore Express), a tourist motel in Keystone
accomodating visitors to Mount Rushmore. In doing so, Jean had found her
niche in life, simply excelling in the hospitality industry and enjoying
the multicultural nature of the work which provided her genuine friends
from all over the world. Jean Ann's day by day philosophy was "kill
them with kindness" and "leave no survivors." She could
turn any and every tired, grumpy and potentially-violent tourist's mind
around in minutes with clever ideas, kind words and genuinely helpful
assistance. Jean's competence and boundless goodwill won her the love of
her customers, her employers and her employees to whom she was an
inspiration. Jean Ann Lower was truly one of a kind in a world of relative
incompetence and nonsense.
She is survived by her husband, Dr. Gerry Lower of Keystone and her three
children, Bo John Boldon of Saux City, Wisconsin and Kalen Hans and Kelly
Jean, still at home in Keystone; a stepson, Justin Gerald Lower and his
wife, Angela, of Eugene, Oregon and a step-granddaughter, Sage August
Lower (a redhead just like Jean), her parents, John and Frances Schanhofer
of Sparta, her father-in-law, Gerald M. Lower, Sr. of Ontario, Wisconsin,
six brothers and sisters, Jerry (and Joan) Schanhofer and Susie (and Ron)
Nauman, both of Sparta, Pauline (and Jerry) Jones of Marshfield, Missouri,
Janet (and Bruce) Randall and John J. Schanhofer, all of Sparta, and
Janice (and Dan) Weber of Cashton, Wisconsin. |
