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Harry Fowells continues
He was accepted and offered a research assistantship, but
in his first the Forest Service offered him a full-time job
at their experiment station in Berkeley. The offer was too
good to turn down, and Fowells decided to pursue his doctorate
part-time. At the Forest Service, he studied seed crops and
nursery stock. Between that and raising a family, he found
time to take some graduate courses, but it was 1953 before
he completed his course work and met with his graduate committee
to start work on his dissertation. That same week, the Forest
Service informed him that they were transferring him to Washington,
D.C.
“I got a ‘swivel-chair’
job,” Fowells says. Besides reviewing the work of other investigators,
he got involved in international research programs that required
a good deal of foreign travel. In
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1958, 30 years after he began his
education, he earned his Ph.D in plant physiology at the University
of Maryland.
The
classic book he edited, Silvics of Forest Trees of the Unites
States, was published by the Forest Service in 1965. In 1966
he was transferred to the Agricultural Research Service as assistant
director of the international programs division, which involved
travel in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. He retired in
1971, and five years later he and his wife moved back to the
Northwest, settling near Fowells’ sister in Oak Harbor on Whidbey
Island in Washington.
Through the years the couple
kept in touch with the University, often attending alumni events
and communicating with their fellowship recipients. This year’s
student, Harry says, is a young man from Chile, Patricio J.
Alzugaray, who is studying forest regeneration and the effects
of fertilization on Douglas-fir |
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seedlings. Several years after Mildred’s
passing in 1995, Harry remarried. He and his second wife, Winifred,
the widow of a former college classmate, continue to live in Oak
Harbor. One of his sons lives in Bend, the other in Washougal. His
daughter lives in California.
George Brown, who was Dean
when Fowells made his gift, calls him an ardent supporter of the
College: “He has a strong sense of the importance of education,
what the College did for him, and a commitment to reinvest in the
future.” Brown says their loyalty to the college was reflected throughout
their lives, and remembers their attendance at many alumni events
and Fernhopper Days. Fowells says, health permitting, he is looking
forward to attending his 70th reunion next year.
— M.F.
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