Remembering

Altice Edmund Lowery
April 22, 1915-April 29, 1988

My maternal grandfather was born and raised in Smith Center, Kansas. He moved west to attend college in Nevada, but soon dropped out of school and moved to Los Angeles. He worked for a while operating the ferry between Newport Beach and Balboa Island; in fact, he had an opportunity to buy a lot on Balboa Island, and decided not to. I'm pretty sure he kicked himself years later for that decision, since property there now runs in the millions of dollars. Eventually, he made his way as a machinist in the Shell oil fields in Signal Hill. He married my grandmother, Rose Elizabeth Herzog (b. 1909), in 1940. They had two children, which led to seven grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren (at current count), only one of whom he ever met.

Although his mother was a teetotaler, my grandfather was an alcoholic. He was verbally abusive when his children were young, but had mellowed quite a bit by the time I knew him. My strongest memories of him were him sitting at our kitchen table, drinking beer and eating pickled peppers, red-faced and sweating. I also remember Christmases when they would unload their car at my house; it took many trips back and forth before our living room was full of gifts. They were very generous. I remember the time he was basting a turkey shirtless and ended up with second-degree burns on his large belly from the grease. And he sold me my first car, a green pinto wagon, when I was 18.

The last time I saw him was at Easter 1988. I was seven months pregnant with my second child. A couple of weeks later, he was ill and refused to go to the doctor. One morning, when my grandmother couldn't rouse him, she called the paramedics. Exploratory surgery showed he had an acute case of peritonitis and sepsis, probably brought on by his alcoholism. He never came out of the coma. I was planning to go visit him at the hospital on Saturday morning, and received a phone call late Friday night that he had passed away. It took me a long time to forgive myself for not going to visit him earlier. That funeral was the hardest one for me, knowing that my unborn child would never know his great grandpa "Pops", and that my oldest child would probably not remember him.

I love you, grandpa.

(This picture was taken in August 1981 in my grandparents' backyard in Montebello, CA. Left to right: my grandpa and my dad.)