Our visionary comrade, Donald M. Lowe (骆明达), 1928-2009

Tani E. BARLOW

Donald Mingdah Lowe was born in Shanghai on December 27, 1928 and died at the age of 80 on July 29, 2009 in Houston, Texas.  The arc of his early life took him from Shanghai to Hong Kong, Rangoon, Dali (Yunnan), and Calcutta, always a step ahead of the Japanese Imperial Army, and finally to the United States in 1934.  Eldest son of an upwardly mobile Christian family, Donald’s father, Chuan-hua Gershom Lowe, and his mother Hsien-en Sharon Lowe (nee Nie), worked in the diplomatic corps of the Guomindang until Liberation in 1949.  Originally from Jiujiang, Jiangxi, Gersham’s branch of the Lowes had moved to Hankou in Hubei, where Donald’s grandfather worked in the Anglican missionary compound.  The family dialect and comfort food is Hubei.  After a dislocated and spotty primary education during the family’s long flight, Donald attended Williston Academy in Easthampton Massachusetts, Yale University and took his M.A. at University of Chicago (where his father and uncles had been educated) and his doctoral degree in History at University of California, Berkeley, where his two daughters were born.  His first marriage ended in divorce.  Lowe taught at Duquesne University, University of California at Riverside and City College of New York before settling at San Francisco State University in 1968 where he taught until his retirement in 1993.  Ever itinerant, he set down new roots in Columbia, Missouri, Seattle, Washington and Houston, Texas for his temperament and his life experience oriented him to look optimistically toward what he always called “the next destination.”