Delores Lowmon was born at St. Joseph’s Hospital, in Aberdeen, Washington on March 22, 1937. She is an active volunteer at the Olympia Senior Center. Lowmon is second generation Italian American. Her grandparents were immigrants that came through Ellis Island, New York in the early 1900s from Bari and Sicily. The Jenna and DeBella families settled in the “wild town” of Aberdeen. They traveled back and forth from Aberdeen to Portland, Oregon looking for work following the years of the Great Depression. As an only child, Lowman’s greatest influences have been her mother, Mary Rose, her father, John (Giovanni), and the people she enjoys meeting every day. Delores was married twice and is the mother of three grown children with Aberdeen firefighter Donald Lane. Her mother lived with the family until she passed away and was a key person in their home and lives. Delores remarried happily in 1977, to William Lowman. Taking a chance on a new path in life, William and Delores decided to manage an apartment complex while they volunteered at the Olympia Senior Center. Their life was a shared experience of love, laughter and possibility that continues even after William’s passing.
     Growing up in Aberdeen in the 1940s and ‘50s, Lowmon witnessed both prejudice and acceptance between the different ethnic immigrant groups and social classes. Aberdeen is an immigrant community comprised of Italians, Jews, Japanese, Native Americans, Blacks, Hispanics, Yugoslavians, Croatians, Swedes, Norwegians, and white European settlers with Irish and English roots. As Delores was growing up, the guidance, acceptance, and wisdom of her parents led her to be open to accepting people as they are – for whom they are – not their social definitions. Her perspective of prejudice and racism shifted in her 30s as she began to see the effects of prejudice in United States culture.

     As I grew up in the Harbor, I had a good time. It was wild! It was a wild town. I was probably four years old, because at five years old I went to kindergarten in Aberdeen. There was an opening for my dad to work in Portland to repair shoes. This Italian guy was selling his business, his shoe shop in Aberdeen. That’s why we went back to Aberdeen. My dad called it “Johnny’s Shoe Repair.” The shop was on K Street – K and Wishkah. I was very glad I grew up in Aberdeen, because where I lived, you could walk to the theatre. You could walk to so many places and you didn’t have to worry. I’d go see my grandpa on the bike. My dog could go with me. Not like now, where you have to have a leash. My cousin would take me to the movies. He’s five years older than me, so if I were five, he’d be ten. Every week at the D & R Theater they’d show serial cartoons like Superman or the Green Hornet and maybe a movie. It would cost us about 10 cents, 5 cents. We went every Saturday. I love movies.

     A.J. West Elementary School was very cliquish. Groups stayed together. There were the Hill Kids – they had the money. Your West Enders was probably your average people, and that’s where I was from. Then there was South Side – and that was starting to go downhill in your social status of what’s acceptable. And “Cosi” – Cosomopolis as we called it – the Cosi kids were the poor people. Very cliquish. You’d go down the hall and usually it was the rich kids that turned down and grabbed your sweater to see where it was made. And it bothered a couple of my girlfriends very bad. They took out the tags. My mother made a lot of my clothes. The Pauli girls were older than me and they had neat clothes. When they were going to get rid of something, they’d call me and I’d go over and take what I wanted.

     Now I knew all of them. I was friends with all of them because it just didn’t bother me. I don’t care who you are or where you come from. You might be richer than me, you might be poorer, but we’re going to have a good time. We’re going to talk. So it never bothered me what you thought you were. I knew who I was. Either you accept me, or you don’t. And that’s OK, because there’s another nice person right over there. You have to work at it all your life because you come across these people, and if you let them get to, you’d never enjoy anything.

     It was 1955 when I graduated high school. For being such a cliquish bunch, we have the best class reunions. We are the closest bunch there is now and we meet out here at Hawks Prairie about every three months and have lunch. At the last luncheon I was at, Jack Thompson got up and sat with me and told me, “I went by the place where your dad used to have his shoe shop. God, I remember how much fun we had with him.” It’s nice to go back and have the lunches, and to have the class reunions, because there is always something said about my mother or my father. I’ve always had people come up and talk about my mom and dad and surprise me. At one of the reunions they talked about my granddad. They changed people’s lives, to have them still talk about them, you know?

     One of my friends – he’s a Cosi kid – asked, “Would your dad sponsor us for a ball team?” And I say, “I don’t know, but you got to ask him. I’ll go with ya.” And we go into the shop and he asked him. My dad sees that they were poor kids. They didn’t have ball shoes like they have now. And Bud was lucky, he had shoes. So they played, and my dad got them shirts told them, “If you win, I’ll give you a treat at the end.” So they won! And in those days, to go up to Seattle to see the Mariners was just a dream. He took them up there. He and a friend got the kids there in his car. He bought them peanuts and hot dogs to eat while they watching the game. Coming back, he took them to dinner. None of them forgot that. When they came back, they told me they just loved it. When we were talking about it, I asked him, “What do you think kids today would think?” He says, “They’d expect that. That’s all expected now. But in ‘52, ‘53, and ’54, you really appreciated stuff like that. I still hear about it today, you know, at our luncheons, whenever I meet ‘em. Jack Thompson who came to all of my parties would go down to the shop and talk to my dad. He says, “I can just see your dad – always with that cigar in his mouth.” So here we are at 75!

     Loretta is a friend of mine. She’s dead now and she never married. She was just neat, always interested in everything. She had a tough road there when she was getting sick, trying to go into these nursing homes that are outrageously expensive while facing the questions, “where am I going? What am I going to do?” Then she got settled. At a rough time in my life, I asked, “How do you get through?” She said to me, “Picture a road and you’re going down it. There is this path, and then you have to go down that path. This is where you turn. You have to go, but you don’t have to stay on that path. You can walk out and go down another path. This is how I look at life. It’s a path. It doesn’t always lead me to where I’m going, but that’s the way I have to look at it.” It brought back my grandfather saying, “Life is a road you go down, and you go off in different directions.” This is what it’s all about. And then one day, you come to the end of it. That’s it – you’re at the end of the path. It makes me stronger. It builds strength for me. And that’s the way it is, and we all have it. It’s just how we get through it. You know? And I’ve seen so many times before.

~Interviewed & transcribed
by Laura Hersh