LOWRY

Posted by Cathy Gowdy on Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 05:16:21 :

Ross Valley Reporter
Jan. 29-Feb. 4, 2002
Page 7

Strange accident kills prominent Marin woman

Marin lost a vibrant part of its past and a part of its future last week when Thea Lowry of Novato died in a bizarre and tragic accident on Highway 101.

Lowry, 69, died when she stopped to help a man whose lawnmower had fallen from his pick-up truck onto the highway, blocking traffic near the Highway 37 overpass. A car swerved to avoid crashing into the stopped traffic and debris, hitting Lowry instead.

“Thea did everything…she was really incredible,” says Kayla Kahn of Sausalito. “She was very much a part of Sausalito.”

Lowry, who was sister of Pulitzer prize-winning poet Gary Snyder and, through him, a fried of the beat poets and writers, including Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg, joined Kahn’s theater group in 1960.

Lowry was the ingénue in “A Visit to a Small Planet,” one of the first productions at the Gate Play House, which Kahn owned. She participated in other plays at the house over the next few years before it went out of business due to constraints from larger chains.

“That’s how I met her and we’ve been friends ever since,” Kahn says.

Lowry was an active part of Marin in the following decades. A pilot who at one time her own plane, Lowry was once chair of the Marin chapter of the Ninety Nines, a women pilots’ organization.

She was also the first woman to run in the Dipsea race and an author.

Lowry wrote two books about small chicken farms in Petaluma, one of them featuring photography by Sausalitan Greg George, Kahn’s son.

She was also a member of the Marin County Grand Jury when she died.