Bowman Remembered as ‘Wonderful, Determined and Forthright’ Presence

Flags at the Lewis County offices were lowered to half staff Tuesday after news of former Lewis County Treasurer Rose Bowman’s death began to spread through the community.

“She had a heart for her community,” said County Commissioner Edna Fund Tuesday morning.

Bowman, 72, died Tuesday after a battle with cancer. 

Referring to Bowman simply as a former county treasurer does a disservice to her legacy, according to friends, family and colleagues. 

“If she saw a need, she’d step in and fill it and find people who could help,” her son Stan Bowman told The Chronicle Wednesday. 

She brought the Treasurer’s Office into the computer age, served two terms in the state House of Representatives, spent more than 20 years in Chehalis Rotary, traveled internationally to fight polio and give supplies to a special needs school in Mexico, was active in the Republican Party, founded programs such as Summerfest and the annual Tri-Club Rotary auction, raised three children while helping at her family business and meanwhile fought cancer five times.

“It was hard to keep up with her,” said Ron Averill, a fellow Rotarian and a former Lewis County commissioner.

Fund was emotional as she remembered her friend and colleague as one of several women of her generation, along with Donna Karvia, who also died this year, who stood out as role models in Lewis County. She never shied away from speaking her mind and was “very forthright,” Fund said.

“She exhibited that as a mom, too,” Stan Bowman, 47, said Wednesday. “She always stood up for us.”

Stephanie Marcum, Bowman’s daughter, said she spent the past four months with her family in Centralia, and asked her mother for words of wisdom for her granddaughters. 

“She said ‘Understand that the world is out there.  You can have any piece of it that you want to work for.  You have the talent, knowledge and skills to do anything you want to do,’” Marcum wrote in an email.

The Board of Lewis County Commissioners plans to recognize Bowman at Monday’s regular commission meeting. 

A memorial has been scheduled for 2 p.m. May 13 at Centralia College’s TransAlta Student Commons at the Bowman Rotary Banquet Room.

Bowman was born on Valentine’s Day, 1945, in Oklahoma and raised on a farm in Arkansas with her five siblings.

“Growing up, she was really shy,” Stan Bowman said.

Rose Bowman’s paternal grandfather was a circuit preacher in the Ozarks, Marcum said. Bowman grew up watching his ministries, and learned from him about missionaries serving overseas and was inspired to serve others as well.

She and husband Leon married in 1962 and settled in Lewis County three years later, where they established their business, Kresky Auto Repair and Electric. As a mother of three working full-time, Bowman started going to Centralia College and earned an associate’s degree. She began getting more involved in the community and found her calling.

“She found she had a natural talent for leadership and organization,” Stan Bowman said. 

She served two terms, from 1989 to 1993, as a Republican representing the 20th Legislative District in the state House of Representatives. She was active in the state Republican Party and was on the board for Centralia College.

Bowman joined Chehalis Rotary in 1996. Leon Bowman was already a member of Twin Cities Rotary. 

“Rose and Leon were a team throughout all of this,” Stan Bowman said. “They did everything with the support of one another.”

The annual Tri-Club Rotary Auction was her creation, said Twin Cities Rotary member and longtime friend Larry McGee.

Members of Lewis County Rotary clubs are missing Bowman’s leadership as they prepare for the 2017 auction. 

“One of the problems we’re having right now is most of what we do for the auction, she had in her head,” said Averill, organizing this year’s auction, scheduled for May 12 at the new Centralia College TransAlta Student Commons.

The auctions have generated $900,000 for the community, McGee said. 

“Rose made that happen,” he said. 

Bowman was also committed to eradicating polio and helping with medical needs in developing countries, friends said. 

McGee recalled a time he and his wife once traveled to India with Bowman and her husband, Leon, to administer the polio vaccine to 600 children there. The couples traveled several times together. 

“She had so much energy,” he said. 

Bowman helped start Centralia’s Summerfest in 1980 and pushed Centralia High School to have soccer programs, which are still in existence today, Stan Bowman said. 

“She was trying to do things to make things better for her kids and for other people,” he said. 

Bowman always involved her three children, Steve, Stephanie and Stan, in her volunteer work, passing on her commitment to public service to the next generation.

She was elected Lewis County treasurer in 1994 and served in that position until her retirement in 2014.

Current County Treasurer Arny Davis worked with Bowman as her chief deputy treasurer before she retired from public office.

“When Rose was here, the walls of this office were loaded with recognitions and awards,” he said. “Rose was a great mentor … I just thought the world of her.”

During Bowman’s time as county treasurer, she brought the office into the digital era. 

“She took it from ledgers and hand work into the computer age,” Davis said. “She modernized the Lewis County Treasurer’s Office. 

More recently, she was heavily involved in the bonding and building of the Northwest Sports Hub and sports complex with the county’s Public Facilities District, Davis said. 

For some, Bowman’s strong personality could be overpowering, but Davis characterized her as a woman “ahead of her time” who had little patience for laziness.

“She’s one of the strongest women I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with or knowing,” Davis said. 

Bowman served as governor of Rotary District 5020 in the 2015-16 year, and visited 90 clubs in person while battling cancer. 

It wasn’t Bowman’s first experience with the illness. All told, she had five different rounds of cancer in her life, Stan Bowman told The Chronicle. Her final fight with the disease was the hardest, and the first to include chemotherapy and radiation.

“This last round was four years,” he said. 

Bowman never let her cancer stop her though, he said. In addition to keeping up her activities with the Rotary, Rose and Leon traveled to Korea not long after her most recent diagnosis.

“What a wonderful, determined person,” McGee said. 

To remember Bowman, members of Rotary District 5020 are working to raise $25,000 to repair a diesel engine in a bus that the Rotary Club of Strathcona Sunrise in Canada purchased, loaded with wheelchairs and planned to deliver to the village of El Tuito, near Puerto Vallarta in Mexico.

However, the bus broke down in Everett in December and has been in Leon Bowman’s auto repair shop ever since.

The Strathcona Sunrise project is similar to one of Bowman’s previous projects. She and others once drove a refurbished bus filled with supplies to a small town in Mexico.

“We need your help to make this a reality. I’m asking you to donate what you can to honor Rose,” wrote Tom Carroll, 2017-18 governor of Rotary District 5020, in a note on the crowdfunding site. “I sincerely believe this is what Rose would want us to do.”

Stan Bowman agreed. 

“I think it’s exactly what she would want,” he said. 

Donations can be made at https://www.gofundme.com/rememberrose.