{"id":11115,"date":"2009-07-01T12:10:41","date_gmt":"2009-07-01T17:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/home.bates.edu\/?p=11115"},"modified":"2018-06-04T09:30:04","modified_gmt":"2018-06-04T13:30:04","slug":"your-page-regarding-harry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2009\/07\/01\/your-page-regarding-harry\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Page: Regarding Harry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"don-hill-commencement09-022\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Harry W. Rowe graduated in 1912, began work at Bates in 1914, and retired as dean of the faculty in 1957. That was two years before I was born.<\/p>\n

He was 90 when I met him while working a few summer hours in his garden at his home on College Street.<\/p>\n

He was 92 when I became his roommate.<\/p>\n

On move-in day my senior year, 1980, the phone rang in our Turner House suite. The voice on the phone was easy to recognize: Dean Harry Rowe \u2014 “Harrirowe” to most of his peers.<\/p>\n

“Don, my daughters want to put me in a nursing home,” he said. “I’m hoping that I can find a responsible Bates student to take the room upstairs here so that I might remain at home.”<\/p>\n

I moved in immediately. It was an odd decision, like a lot of my decisions back then, which is perhaps why I was a few credits short of a diploma in 1980\u201381.<\/p>\n

I found that not much ever went to waste at Dean Rowe’s home. Like many of his generation, he saved every National Geographic<\/em> issue and owned complete collections of several other periodicals. He saved scraps of bread, cake, and other such stuff in a special place in the big chest freezer.\u00a0These became the fundamental ingredients for his annual batch of brown bread.<\/p>\n

Almost everything was planned out, and the list of tasks was always forward-looking.\u00a0 Each spring he made a batch of root beer so it would be aged properly for the warm days of summer.\u00a0It was a welcome reward for the boys who worked summers in his garden.<\/p>\n

Almost everything was planned out, and the list of tasks was always forward-looking.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Dean Rowe, like many of us, enjoyed foods that aren’t necessarily good for us. Fried clams at the Chickadee were a high point. And he loved<\/em> to add salt to everything.\u00a0The doctors wanted him to cut down on salt, so his dutiful daughter replaced all the salt in the house with a salt substitute.\u00a0One day of that was enough for Dean Rowe. “Don, I’m 92 years old.\u00a0My quality of life is diminished without salt,” he announced. “Pick a solitary shaker and put real salt in it \u2014 and tell no one.”<\/p>\n

I broke my promise recently, telling his daughter Ruth Rowe Wilson ’36, who just turned 95. She was relieved that her “well-intentioned but misguided” actions \u2014 those are Dean Rowe’s words \u2014 were not heeded. Ruth knows about quality of life.<\/p>\n

One Saturday morning the phone rang while we were up in his attic archives (the attic stairs were off-limits to Dean Rowe, but we were up there anyway). The caller asked for Dean Rowe’s daughter \u2014 odd, I thought. “I’m sorry, she’s not available,” I said.\u00a0 “Would you like to speak with Dean Rowe?”<\/p>\n

There was a long pause before the caller responded somewhat incredulously, “Is that possible<\/em>!?” Dean Rowe took the call, then hung up. He was grinning. “Go to the library and get the latest issue of the SAR<\/em> Magazine<\/em>,” he said with glee, referencing the publication of the Sons of the American Revolution.\u00a0“They’ve published my obituary!” He was tickled, actually, as this was a man who liked to show off his “Life Begins at 90” T-shirt.<\/p>\n

Harry Rowe was a man of his word.\u00a0After finishing his oatmeal one morning, he carried his breakfast dishes to the kitchen sink\u2014 not an easy task with a walker.\u00a0He was there at the sink for quite some time but\u00a0I didn’t check on him. That drove him crazy because he liked his space. Finally I carried my dishes over to the sink, not to interrupt but to see if he needed assistance.<\/p>\n

It was clear that he had been crying. “Hope once asked me to put a flower box outside this window. I never did it, and I had forgotten about it until just now,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Hope” was Eleanor Chandler Rowe ’12, his wife and classmate, who had died a few years before. The agenda for that day was transformed.\u00a0We procured a flower box, brackets, soil, and flowers.\u00a0The flower box was in place that very afternoon.<\/p>\n

Over the last couple of years, I earned my final college credits, and at this year’s Commencement I marched with the Class of 2009, wearing a garnet tie that belonged to Harrirowe.<\/p>\n

Back then, he had been frustrated with my academic performance. I hope that he would be pleased today. He, of all people, would understand that some things take awhile.<\/p>\n

By Don Hill ’81<\/em><\/div>\n
Don Hill ’81 lives in New Hampshire.<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of all people, Harry Rowe ’12 would know that some things take awhile<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,7,130,14,11009],"tags":[10856,10831],"class_list":["post-11115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-life","category-alumni","category-collaboration","category-faculty-staff","category-the-college","tag-bates-magazine","tag-commencement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11115"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88535,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11115\/revisions\/88535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}