Philip Alden Bowie

Philip Alden Bowie came into the world on Wednesday, September 14, 1938, during a New England hurricane, the same year Howard Hughes set a round-the-world flight record, Orson Welles ignited a panic with his fictional "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast, a new car was $800, a loaf of bread was nine cents, and the Dow Jones average was 132. He was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, to his newspaper reporter mother Edith and his cabinetmaker father Erol.

He attended South Street School in Northampton through grade six, then moved to the hill village of Williamsburg where his father and Grandfather John had built a home at the foot of Petticoat Hill. His youth was filled with violin lessons, hikes through the woods with his border collie Cindy at his heels, and village activities. He picked shade tobacco beginning at age 14 and played his fiddle in a combo called the Nightriders for Saturday night hill town square dances. With his father's help he built first a wooden runabout boat and then built from a set of Canadian plans a hydroplane named Firefly, which he raced all over New England. He worked summers in several factory jobs, and for a time managed a two-pump one-man gas station in Williamsburg, one of his favorite jobs. He attended U. Mass. for two years. He was trained as a mechanical draftsman at Hamilton Standard in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, and worked there four years on aircraft propeller and jet engine fuel controls. He also worked for Kollmorgen in Northampton on submarine periscopes, and on weekends trained in skydiving at the rural Turners Falls Airport before moving to Clemson, SC, where he attended college for a year and worked as a draftsman for Saco-Lowell Research on textile machinery.

When the research center was closed, he moved to New Bern, North Carolina, to work for Stanley Power Tools (now Bosch) for four years. He helped found a weekly shopping guide and then partnered to start up and for twelve years run a successful graphic arts business. He earned his private pilot license in 1981 and then an instrument rating. He found his own Cessna Skyhawk in a barn by a mountaintop grass strip in Pennsylvania. He named her Angel and dressed her in a unique blue-and-white paint job of his own design. He flew her to New England, Florida, the Smokies, the Bahamas, and the Outer Banks over twenty years. For years he was a volunteer pilot for the Neuse River Foundation where he also served on the board of directors and was inducted into the foundation's hall of fame for his environmental services. His frequent passenger Riverkeeper Rick Dove called him Snoopy, a nickname that stuck. Angel appeared on several national news shows about eastern NC river pollution, including 60 Minutes.

Over his lifetime Phil was an avid motorcycle rider and loved to get lost in the wind and run the back roads and the Blue Ridge of the Great Smokies, much like the Berkshires where he grew up.

Phil was a lifelong avocational freelance writer, publishing 300 articles and short stories over the years in magazines including The Saturday Evening Post, Reader's Digest, Heartland USA, Motorboat, AOPA Pilot, New Hampshire Profiles, and many aviation, boating, and travel publications, covering diverse subjects from blue marlin angling on the cobalt Gulf Stream to human interest profiles to a rocket car attempt on the World Land Speed Record on the Bonneville salt flats. He wrote and photographed under his own name and two pen names for Hatteras World, a company magazine sent to yacht owners worldwide. In his later years he wrote a popular series of four suspense novels, a stand-alone thriller about African elephant poaching, a nonfiction book, and a collection of short stories that included an award winner begun by bestselling author Stephen King. His books are still available in print and e-book on Amazon.

For twenty years while living in New Bern Phil worked part time as a field water quality technician and a Coast Guard licensed boat captain for the NC State University Center for Applied Aquatic Ecology, taking hundreds of regional eighth graders out in the center's research trawler on Neuse River educational tours. He also worked up and down the east coast from Newport to Key West and along the Gulf of Mexico delivering yachts.

For five years he played fiddle with a group called Cold Biscuit in and around New Bern.

Phil is survived by daughter Lisa J. Bowie and grandson Michael Bowie (Christina); daughter Nina Suzette and grandchildren Matthew Robertson, Sarah Luxon, Evan Robertson, and Joshua Alexander and great-grandchildren Athena, Arlo, and Nathan; sister Nancy Daniels; and Aaron Roberts who was like a son to him. He is also survived by the love of his life Naomi Dixon of New Bern.

Memorial services will be at 11:00 am on Monday, April 14, 2025 at Cotten Funeral Home & Crematory.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the charity of one's choice.

Cotten Funeral Home & Crematory is honored to serve the Bowie family.

https://www.philbowie.com/