Jewell P. Lowe
Lafayette Daily Advertiser 2/21/1985
1985: ACADIANA'S ACTION PEOPLE.
SW. LA. EDUCATION & REFERRALS' JEWELL LOWE.
From the Lafayette Daily Advertiser of February 21st, 1985:
'L-O-W-E' SPELLS 'H-E-L-P.'
This could be the story of a woman who has dedicated all her adult life to voluntary service - as creator of the nation's first outpatient clinic for the mentally ill and executive director - first president of the community's only comprehensive public hotline, for instance.
It could tell of her being named "Citizen of the Year" in 1969, first honorary memberCivic Cup winner in '70, "Outstanding Professional Woman" in '72, recipient of the prestigious Dr. Felix Formento Award in '73, first non-medical person ever elected associate member by the Louisiana Psychiatric Association and National Services Award winner in '74, and the Louisiana Hospital of the Year," in '75.
But the lady someone once called "the city's only woman with a magic wand" doesn't want it that way.
Something about Jewell Lowe makes her shy away from talking about her successes, except to ask for support on pet projects or thank contributors.
She admits to loving adulation, and scrapbook upon photo albums of newspaper clippings, magazine write-ups and pictures she has gotten in.
"But it embarrassed me," she says, shifting gears in the conversation to her love of cooking, entertainment, the outdoors, world travel, hunting and much more.
Hunting?
"I used to be a good target shot," she comments, seated on a sofa in a room of her home where one wall is gun-lined and holds a portrait of her husband, Bob, hunting.
"Bob taught me to hunt," she explains in the first of several mentions of him. "We've got a hideaway - The Trapper Shack - his more than mine, where we can go to enjoy the outdoors and get away from it all. I shot that duck on the wall there."
She spent a day during hunting season last month, dressed in fatigues and sporting on a three-wheeler.
"And couldn't walk" after getting stuck and having to push the vehicle out, she adds, laughing.
Not hardly the image of a woman born and bred in the wealth of the Parkersons', for whom Crowley's mains street is named and from which seven generations of lawyers have been produced.
But neither is hockey nor fishing, which she enjoyed as a youth.
"I regret being an only child - and only having one (local attorney James Parkerson Roy)," she muses at one point, adding her love for "Jim's aggressiveness, my family's trait."
Lowe shared much of her youth with a cousin, and was raised sternly, she says.
"Today, I think that's for the better," she adds. It taught her to make the most of herself and of life, she explains. Her visitor can readily perceive that.
The Lowe home (her family's) is tastefully jam-packed with fine art, travel replicas, a jade collection and three libraries of books.
A college student at 15 and once seriously interested in law school, Lowe has a love of reading. "There's the 'trash' library with novels, science fiction and so on, the library on Southern history, and this one here, for reference books.
She says she has read or used every book in the reference section, though she had little time for that now.
Lowe spends a good bit of her mornings making and returning phone calls, and works each afternoon in the Southwest Louisiana Education and Referral (232-HELP) center she founded and has headed since 1966.
SLERC, by its nature, means work on several individual projects as well - from a task force on epilepsy (which inflicted a friend of hers years ago and spurred her concern with mental health) to her latest interest, an organ donor program.
"Time is a commodity lacking in my life," says the woman who hates "getting up early, but does it just out of habit."
"I would truly like things more tranquil," she adds.
But she's an admitted workaholic, and a productive one at that.