Beverly J. Rowe

Followed by additional Stories from Their Lives written by Frank

Beverly June Rowe, thankful for a long, loving, and happy life, died in Delaware, Ohio, on Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 2020, at the age of 91. She was born in Fostoria, Ohio on June 27, 1929 to the late Richard and Grace Hessey and had one brother, Gene, who predeceased her. Beverly graduated first in her class from Fostoria High School in 1947. A year earlier, while serving as Secretary for a Methodist District Youth Group, she met Frank E. Rowe, President of the Youth Group, who would become her husband of 72 years. They were immediately smitten and soon married on December 28, 1947. Happy stories abound of their first two years of marriage spent living in a 17-foot yellow single wide trailer.

Beverly was key to Frank’s success in ministry as they served in the West Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church for 40 years pastoring local churches in Genoa, North Baltimore, Lima, Columbus, Bryan, and Zanesville, Ohio. They ended their ministry after serving the Athens, Ohio (now Foothills) District where Frank was the District Superintendent. As the wife of a pastor, Beverly got involved in every church Frank served, sharing freely and often her many gifts especially her love, hospitality, and lovely voice. Always a team, she and Frank offered spiritual guidance, social support and personal friendship to all the members of those wonderful congregations and who, in turn, embraced their ministry with love and appreciation.

Since Methodist ministers receive multiple appointments during their careers, Beverly had the opportunity of working in several different communities. She particularly enjoyed working at Don Johnson’s Florist shop in Lima, Ohio, and serving as the church secretary for the Summit Avenue United Methodist Church in Columbus, Ohio. As a mother, Beverly loved attending the choir and band concerts, theatrical productions, and athletic events of John and Steve which extended from grade school through college. And, since she was quite the competitor, family games were spirited events leading to the Rowe family tradition of opening a new game to play together each Christmas Eve.

Bev thrived in a long, active, shared retirement with Frank. They traveled widely in their camper and participated in many United Methodist ‘Volunteers in Mission’ projects across the country. Bev enjoyed a broad spectrum of activities at various times in her adult life – camping trips with grandchildren, fishing, swimming, gardening, reading, macramé, watching the Buckeyes play football and bridge. For years, Bev played Frank in a yearlong cribbage game which kept the competitive juices flowing. Until two years ago, Bev and Frank taught bridge to fellow residents at Willow Brook Christian Village in Delaware, Ohio where they happily spent their last ten years as active members of that wonderful community. She also loved wintering at Holiday Travel Park in Ft. Myers Beach, Florida where new friends were cherished. It did not take too long before Bev and Frank became experts on how Florida winters should be spent.

Bev is survived by her loving husband, Frank, and by daughter-in-law Teri (Rowe) Roubal who together with Beverly’s son, John Michael Rowe, had five children, Julie (Brad) Luczywo, Isaac (Silvia) Rowe, Samuel Rowe, Joanna Rowe, and Susanna Rowe. They will remember her with love and gratitude for remaining a significant part in their lives after John went home to Jesus 20 years ago and they will add a smile to their tears as they think of the reunion Beverly and John are enjoying. She is also survived by Steve (Lauri) Rowe and their five children, Nathan (Amanda) Rowe, Andrew (Megan DeHaan) Rowe, Peter (Kate Martin) Rowe, Ginny (Sean) Nightingale, and Seth (Julie) Rowe. Her 10 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren were always close to her heart. Steve, Lauri and their family will always cherish the Zoom Conference in which Beverly participated the evening before she passed as she watched her grandchildren and great-grandchildren enjoy a raucous virtual turkey trot. Dressed in beautiful red Christmas pajamas, she watched with a peaceful contented smile on her face which seemed to say, I am ready for what is next.

A Celebration of Life will be held at Willow Brook Christian Village as soon as is reasonable given Covid 19 restrictions. Memorial gifts can be made to any of the churches they served or the United Methodist Volunteers in Mission, c/o UMVIMNCJ, 8800 Cleveland Ave. NW, North Canton, OH 44720. Please note Advance 901375 or online at https://advance.umcmission.org/p-615-united-methodist-volunteers-in-mission-north-central-jurisdiction.aspx

STORY SIXTEEN

LIFE IN A TRAILER

Your Great Grandma and Grandpa started out life together in a 17’ long house trailer.

It was 1947, shortly after the end of World War Two and there was a severe housing shortage. We had no idea where to find a place to live in Toledo, Ohio, near my work at the foundry.

Just a couple months before our wedding, I thought I might have found the solution. A couple had advertised that they had an extra bedroom for rent and would share the rest of the house with a renter. I moved in to check it out.

The second day I was there, in the middle of the night I was awakened by a woman screaming and by this huge domestic fight. She yelled for me to come help her and her husband yelled: “You come out here and you’re a dead man.” He was a big man and not wanting to get involved in a “personal matter” and being the “coward” I was I didn’t budge out of bed (not my proudest moment, prudent, maybe, but not proud). Eventually she managed to get to the phone and called the police. They came and things quickly settled down, and she refused to press charges. The next morning I moved back in to the Y.M.C.A. where I had been living for a year after my folks moved from Toledo to Edgerton, Ohio. (I think I lost a week’s rent) We still had no place to live. The Y.M.C.A. wouldn’t let young Christian women move in with young Christian men!

The solution: we bought a brand new bright yellow house trailer and found a brand new trailer park on Woodville Rd. just across the street from Bethany Methodist Church. Perfect, problem solved! Thus started “life in a trailer”. I didn’t say it was a problem free solution.

I did say it was a brand new trailer park. It had a gravel road, circling the park and they would give you a gravel pad on which to park your car, if you had one, which we didn’t. There were no sidewalks to the utility building in case your trailer had no shower or washing machine, which ours didn’t. I’m not even sure we had a toilet in the trailer, nope, we didn’t.

Never fear, we were in love and two people in love can face any and every problem. Besides your Great Grandpa was “a problem solver”.

The thing is…we were married on December 28th in the dead of winter. Our trailer park was “brand new”. They had not had time or money to even plant grass. After a winter thaw that place was a mud hole. That was alright, we needed a place to live and that was the only park with a vacancy. Besides I figured out a solution. I found a place that had free old used rail road ties, so I just borrowed a truck and took about 15 of them and made a path from our trailer door to the utility room. Of course it took some balancing skill, those suckers aren’t very wide. Never fear we were young and coordinated.

Except, that one fatal freezing morning your Great Grandma put on her brand new overcoat over her pajamas and headed out with the slop jar (that was our portable toilet) in one hand, her shower stuff in the other and was walking the “planks” to the utility building. She was about half way there when I heard for the first time, this “in trouble” scream “Frank”!!!! She had slipped off the rail road ties (some of them were a little tipsy). The stuff and pot went flying and your Great Grandma landed in the mud on her bottom. I said it was freezing not frozen. Your Grand Grandma corrected me, thank God, she was on the way back to the trailer – the pot was empty. Still, she couldn’t get up, she was stuck. Of course I went to her rescue. When I took both arms and finally pulled her out, luckily, without pulling her arms out of their sockets, there was this strange, funny sucking sound when the mud gave her up into my arms. Her beautiful overcoat was ruined. Even the cleaners couldn’t get that stain out of the seat of her coat. Never did come out. I had to buy her a new coat. I knew right then, that your Great Grandma was going to be a high maintenance wife.

Seriously, I thought she might just go home to her Mom and Dad, but she didn’t, though she may have wished a few times that she had.

Speaking of getting stuck, the first time your Great Great Grandma Rowe came to visit the newlyweds, she got stuck. She had to park out on the gravel road because not having a car, we had no gravel parking pad. (No car, meant we had to walk a half mile up Woodville Rd to the nearest bus stop to go anywhere, except across the street to church.) We were to church a lot, because to get thru that first year we had to pray a lot, and we needed and found the encouragement and support of good Christian friends at Bethany.)

Back to my Mother’s visit. The mud should have been no problem because she had her ankle high goulashes on; those were boots that slipped over her shoes. Except that I heard that same scream “Frank” from a much older woman, my Mom. I should have put rail road ties out to the gravel road. She was stuck. She had sunk into the mud up to the top of her boots. If she tried to lift her foot, her shoes came out of the boots. She couldn’t move. “Frank” to the rescue! I had to hold the top of her boots and pull her legs out of the mud every step with that same sucking sound. It wasn’t too bad we only had about 8 more feet to travel to the warm comfort of our beautiful brand new bright yellow trailer. I don’t think Mother came back to see us until summer and the mud had dried out.

Things settled down pretty much after that, except, sometimes we got stuck in bed. In our brand new cozy warm trailer, only the bedroom was small and the bed stood against one wall. A few mornings with the condensation and in freezing February weather, our blankets would literally freeze to the wall and floor. We were stuck again! Being stuck in bed is not always a bad thing! Finally, I could crawl out the top of the blankets and get the hair dryer to thaw your Great Grandma out of bed.

The thing is…spring always comes and life in a trailer gets better, except with spring and summer comes tornados. Fortunately, we weren’t home at the time and as tornados go, it was a modest tornado. Our trailer was only moved about 2 feet off its cement block foundation. We did lose about half our Fostoria glass dishes that had been wedding presents. We got a lot of that Fostoria ware, with your Great Grandma being from Fostoria and everything.

In our brand new 17’ bright yellow trailer the dining room table pulled down from the wall, and covered the nice corner cupboard, in which we stored our Fostoria dishes. It was handy, except, when we left for work, with no sophisticated weather watch like you all have we weren’t warned of a tornado. When we got home all the Fostoria glassware was spread all over the dining room and living room floor, which was all the same room and half of it shattered. It could have been worse. Our neighbor’s trailer was turned clear over on its side.

Which is better…wet uncooked rice all over the floor and ceiling, or broken glass all over the floor? Along with the Fostoria glass, we had gotten a brand new pressure cooker to go along with our brand new trailer, 17’ bright yellow. One evening your Great Grandma decided we would have a “stir fry” with rice for dinner and that she’d try out her brand new pressure cooker. She put in the just the right amount of water and rice and set that baby on the burner. Then she said to herself “Oh, I didn’t put in any salt”. Believe me, those pressure cookers build up a head of steam in a hurry. She got the salt shaker, set that pan off the burner and twisted the lid and bam the steam blew the lid off that cooker and all the wet rice all over the place. I guess that’s why they call it a “pressure cooker.

The good thing is…, by the grace of God your Great Grandma wasn’t hurt and she learned you don’t try to remove a pressure cooker lid until you have let it completely cool, or release the pressure valve. A few minutes later I got home from work, just in time to prevent a nervous break-down and help your Grand Grandma try to clean up wet rice. I think we gave up on stir fry that night and went out for a hamburger. A hamburger is your Great Grandma’s favorite comfort food. All things work out for good. For a year we found grains of rice in the corners of the kitchen counter and under the corner table in the living room.

Wonderful what you learn the 1st year of marriage living in a brand new 17’ bright yellow trailer.

I thought life was pretty exciting living in a trailer with a new wife. Come spring that 1st year they planted some grass and promised some sidewalks by the next year, but by the second year, with our first baby on the way (do you suppose that happened one morning when we were stuck frozen in bed?), your Great Grandma did inform me, we were getting out of there or she was going to move back home.

God is good. We miraculously found a beautiful little green bungalow for rent just across the street behind Bethany Methodist Church. And by that time Bev’s Uncle Clyde, a car dealer in Bloomdale, Ohio, sold us, real cheap, a 1939 Chevrolet. The paint was pretty well worn off but it wasn’t rusted out and it ran real good. I just painted it with a powder puff a dark green color to match the color of our first real house.

This happily ended our life in a trailer, that is, our first trailer. Can you believe it, some of your Great Great Grandmas happiest days were “camping” with our grandchildren in an old used 13’ trailer we bought 30 years after living for a year in our first brand new bright yellow 17’ trailer. I guess she hadn’t forgotten those happy days we spent together the first year and a half in our brand new first trailer.

A story about camping in a 13’ trailer with grandchildren may come later.

The thing is…it’s often said that the first year of marriage is the best or the worst year of your life. The reality is every year has its best and worst moments.

Even after retirement, those “golden years” confront you with the pain of growing older. So, let’s just make every day of every year the best day of our life. Otherwise, just hang in there:

The Bible says: “Love is patient…and kind…Love endureth all things, there is no limit to its faith, its hope, its endurance”. I Cor. 13:4, 7

STORY SEVENTEEN

LIFE IN THE LITTLE GREEN BUNGALOW ON BLANDON AVENUE

The second year and half of our life together, we learned that strange and crazy things happen to the Rowes, even in a nice little green bungalow.

The first fun thing we did was to go beg, borrow and steal furniture from our parents and friends so we could furnish our little green bungalow. We confiscated the bedroom furniture that had been Bev’s ever since she was a little girl. It had been her Grandpa Hessey’s bed to which he had been confined before he died, and which she had admired every time she visited him. He gave her the bed in his will. We used that bed and chest of drawers for 50 years, then we gave it to Myrtle and John for the house John bought for my sister in Lakeside, Ohio. We bought a metal kitchen table and chairs, living room couch, a radio-record player and a high chair for the anticipated baby, who turned out to be your Grandpa Steven Douglas Rowe. Oh yeah, we found a great old antique ice-box and a small chest we used for a bath and diaper changing table.

That meant that there on Blandon Ave just behind Bethany Methodist Church we had two visitors every week, the ice-man bought us hundred-pound blocks of ice, and the milk man delivered four quarts of milk in glass bottles. You could also order country eggs from the milkman.

Now, most of the furniture given us was old stuff, I mean old, but that was okay, because I had learned to paint with a powder puff. I don’t know why, nobody paints with a powder puff anymore. It was fast and you never had to worry about brush marks and you could readily change color schemes to your wife’s liking.

Except that you can’t paint a brand new living room couch. I loved that couch; it was long and comfortable to lie on. I thought it was “purty”. Your Great Grandma didn’t think so. Three months after we bought it, and I was still bragging about “our” choice and we were still making monthly payments on it, Beverly announced to me and to the whole world that she “hated that couch”! She says she didn’t hate it, she just didn’t like it. She hated it. I was crushed. “How can you say that, you helped me pick it out?” “No I didn’t, you picked it out!” “But you were there.” ‘Yes, but you didn’t listen to me. You chose the couch. You make all the decisions.”

The thing is…we had to keep that couch for a lot of years. I thought it might grow on her – it didn’t and after 65 years of marriage she still tells people “I really didn’t like that couch!”

I think she hated more that I didn’t listen to her. I’ve tried for 65 years to be a better listener and I think after that I just let her pick out the new furniture.

Life in the green bungalow got more exciting. Our baby boy was born, a little hell on wheels. He was strong and super active and had a very bright and curious mind. (Had we had him diagnosed, he just may have been called “hyper active”.) He picked up and examined everything and once he lost interest, he just threw it down. One day Stevie’s Grandpa Rowe

was visiting. Early in the morning, Steve got out on the front porch and began to examine the milk bottles that the milk man had just delivered and once satisfied tossed the glass bottle down on the concrete steps.

It must have been a tough week, you know, that was the “last straw”, the straw that broke the camel’s back”. She stuck Stevie in the play pen jail and crying, proceeded to try to clean up the spilt milk, again, plus the broken glass. When she got back in the house, he had pulled the table cloth and dishes off the table and onto the floor. Grandpa Rowe tried to help and comfort his daughter-in-law. “But, he is so active and destructive.” “Yes”, Grandpa said, “but just look at all that potential. “Yes,” Momma said, “but it’s all potential”.

The thing is…Your Grandpa Steven Douglas Rowe’s potential turned out to make his parents very very proud. The fact is he was an adorable handsome baby. Actually, he was a pretty good kid. You didn’t even have to rock him to sleep – just stick him in bed and he was out like a light (of course he had worn himself and us completely out), he ate everything, and a lot of it. He loved desert so much that, denial of desert was his most effective discipline. (It didn’t work on his brother.) He would pick up his toys with a fury. We never had to prod him to do his school homework. He gradually became a very self disciplined person, most of the time…”like father, like son they say”.

Two other scary incidents while we lived in the little green bungalow on Blandon, just behind Bethany Methodist church.

The kitchen stove was furnished with the rental. It had what they called a “deep well” burner and pot. It was kinda like the modern slow cooker, except the “high setting” was high. One Sunday morning before we went to Sunday school and church at Bethany Methodist Church, I put a big beef pot roast in the deep well, with a little water in the bottom, turned on the electric burner and forgot to turn it off “high” to “slow cook”. We got home to a house full of smoke and a burned to a crisp beef roast. I ran to the kitchen grabbed the lid, burned my fingers, dropped the lid, threw in some water, which only spewed out greasy water and steam all over the stove and wall. Then I turned off the burner. I had to take your Great Grandma out for hamburgers that day.

You can’t believe the ugly smell of burned to a crisp beef roast smoke. Before it was over we had to wash down every wall and ceiling, every surface of the furniture in the house, take clothes out of closets and chests and wash them. We never did quite get the smell out of our brand new couch that your Great Grandma now already hated. It took several years for your Great Grandpa to become a gourmet cook.

The other time we almost burned the little green bungalow to the ground happened the first time we had a baby sitter for our perfect brand new baby boy. After six months, Mama needed a night out, so we found a real nice and responsible baby sitter from Sunday school and went to the city of Toledo’s civic center for a wrestling match. Don’t ask me why, but before the baby came along we loved going to wrestling matches, “Nature Boy”, was the world champion and our hero, for whom we loudly cheered. Now, before you judge your Great, Great Grandparents too harshly, at least go to a wrestling match, and don’t watch it on T.V.-GO. It’s really an exciting show. You won’t believe the crazy people who go to wrestling matches.

The preliminaries were over and they were just ready to introduce “Nature Boy” when the announcement came over the public address system. “Mr. and Mrs. Frank Rowe, there has been an emergency at your home, please go home immediately.”

If the heart attack we both almost had, didn’t kill us, it’s a wonder I didn’t kill us both on that drive home in our cheap Chevrolet painted dark green to match the little green bungalow, that might be burning down. (Of course you know, baby Stevie and the nice baby sitter from the church got out safely or you wouldn’t be here reading these crazy stories).

We got home the fire department was still there. They explained that our baby and the baby sitter from the church were fine and over at the neighbors house. The kerosene hot water heater in the basement had caught fire. The neighbor happened to be out walking her dog and saw the flame through the basement window and called the fire department. Fortunately the fire station was just down the street from Bethany Methodist Church, behind which still stood our little green bungalow. They got there in time so the flames had only scorched the rafters above the burner. I had just filled the kerosene tank of the burner a while before we left for the wrestling match, and apparently had spilled some excess oil into the burner.

God is good and we are the luckiest, to indeed now have all the Great Great Grandkids from Stevie’s side of the family. We learned that kerosene smoke is not near as bad as burned roast beef smoke. (You know that 5# roast beef had burned down to the size of a walnut by the time we got home from church. That’s why I had to take your Great Great Grandma out for a hamburger, which is still her favorite comfort food).

So life goes on in the little green bungalow on Blandon Avenue.

We also learned while living there new Mothers shouldn’t drink too much coca cola when they are bored or stressed out caring for a hyper active kid and dealing with a husband that won’t listen to her. I had to buy a whole 24 bottle case of coke for your Great Great Grandma every week. When she got a tooth ache and had to go to the dentist for the first time since we got married, the dentist found she had 17 cavities. I told you she was high maintenance. We were still paying that dental bill when Stevie started to college.

Don’t say it – no one today would drink that much coke – just remember your Great Great Grandma had no TV. As to not going to the dentist for 2 ½ years, back then you only went to the dentist if you had a tooth ache.

Life was good, for your Great Great Grandparents when we lived in a little green bungalow on Blandon Avenue just behind Bethany Methodist Church.

But life was more a challenge for your Great Grandmother. She might just as well have been a single parent when it came to caring for your Grandfather the first 9 years of their married lives. I was working days at the Foundry and attending Toledo University at night. Then I was working at Genoa Methodist church and attending Bowling Green State University, and then I was working at the church while attending Oberlin School of Theology. The first year and a half in seminary I was away from home 3 days and nights. The responsibilities of home and motherhood fell pretty much on her shoulders. It took 9 years for your Great Grandpa to decide what he was going to be when he grew up and until he was ordained a Methodist Preacher. Your Great Grandma was awarded a well deserved plaque certificate for “putting hubby thru” college and seminary and for her excellence in motherhood.

The Bible says: “Who can find a virtuous woman? (Well, I did.) “Her price is far above rubies…Her children rise up and call her blessed and her husband also, and he praiseth her.” Proverbs 31: 10, 28. Thank you, my Bebhoney, for blessing us all.