Melville Lowman

Melville Lowman lived in the house where he was born in the Brooklyn section of Baltimore until he moved to Ferndale in 1996. He was the youngest of five children. He left school after completing 9th grade at Benjamin Franklin Junior High School to help support his mother after his father was killed in an industrial accident.
He was very proud of his Army service during World War II. Mr. Lowman had just turned 19 when he took part in the D-Day invasion and landed at Normandy Beach. He often joked that he could never figure out how he got from the troop transport out in the channel of the beach because he never learned to swim. Fighting through the French countryside and on to Paris, he then spent the freezing winter in the Battle of the Bulge. He wrote extensively of this time in his life recalling both horrific details of the time as well as many heart-warming and humorous moments of a youth spent at war.
Mr. Lowman was a Staff Sergeant in the United States Occupation Forces in Berlin in 1945 when he met the former Margaret Coleman of Dublin, Ireland, a member of the British Territorial Service stationed in Berlin. They married in Berlin in April of 1946. After the war they returned to America and raised their four children in Mr. Lowman's Brooklyn home. Mrs. Lowman, a naturalized American citizen, passed away in 2002.
As an avid bowler, Mr. Lowman bowled on three weekly leagues. He loved watching baseball and being with his family. He was a member of the Linthicum Optimists and a lifetime member of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign War.
Mr. Lowman completed his GED in his forties and went on to take college courses. He worked for many years as a general foreman on the waterfront at Olin-Mathieson Chemical Company and later worked for Glidden Company, Westinghouse and retired from CGR. He continued to work part-time for Riverside Realty until 2004 when his health declined due to kidney disease.