Distant Innocence: Lowry Group

Monday, April 18, 2022

Lowry Group

It's been a pretty miserable Spring here in Lake Wobegon country. In fact, looking out my window as I write on April 18, I see snow falling, one of perhaps a half dozen days of April snow showers (so far). Probably not what the song writers were thinking with their April showers lyrics.

To avoid falling into brooding, I picked up my ongoing project of searching for historical photos of my home town of Lowry, Minnesota and adding to the Photographic History of the Village of Lowry collection. This project coincided with the launch of this blog and owes credit to a group of Lowry notables, collectively known as the "Lowry Group*", who took on the task of documenting the village's history. This effort produced a photo book, published in 2002, proudly titled Our Home Town. The book includes a photo of every structure in the village, a substantial effort on its own, but more remarkably, it documents the ownership lineage of these structures as well. This information could perhaps with great difficultly be extracted from title documents, but quite remarkably was based solely the memories of this dedicated group. (There is a caveat in the book that there may be omissions in the ownership list but I should yearn for such a memory.) It also includes numerous photos of Lowry-ites and Lowry scenes, many of which I shamelessly copied into my Lowry History album.

So I salute you:

*Lowry Group Members

Elwood "Buckshot" Johnson - President

Researchers: Glenn Hoplin, Arnold Hedlin, Esther Hedlin, Bob Chan, Gurvin & Myra Femrite, Donald & Doris Hoplin, Chuck Thompson, John Weaver, Roy Robieson, Paul & Dee Weisel, Alan Dahlseng, Gerald Olson, R'Dell Molander, John Femrite, John Erickson, Charles Christianson.

Here are a few look-ins to the Lowry book to pique your interest. Note - this history ends in 2002.

The Teigen Home on 114 on the west side. This house was converted into 2 apartments at some point and take note of one the occupants: The Jaegers. This was the Latvian refugee family that Lowry embraced in the late 40's, early 50's. Read their story - Lowry's Latvian DP's.

Ole & Esther Hoplin's, my grandparents. This Swedish style home was built in 1928, just before the crash and managed to stay out of foreclosure due to the generosity of the bachelor farmers who held the mortgage. It was not paid off until after WWII. For detail: 304 Drury Avenue [Update: add Julie Formo to the ownership list.]