Eva “Marr” Bowman was a farm wife who lived all her life on Colorado’s plains – but that didn’t mean she wasn’t up on the latest environmental issues.
Bowman, who died Saturday at age 93, left $200,000 to the Wray school district as seed money to install a wind turbine that will supply all of the school’s electricity and 25 percent of the electricity for the town.
By selling the electricity to the town, the school district will make $180,000 a year, said Bowman’s grandson, Michael Bowman, of Wray.
“We’d hoped she would still be alive to see the wind turbine operational next month, her 75th high school class reunion,” he said.
In her letter to the school board about the gift, Eva Bowman said, “There is no greater gift we can give our children than that of a sound education.”
Her nephew and others have raised most of the rest of the total – $1.8 million – for the turbine.
Marr Bowman, as everyone called her, was a fixture in Wray, where she sat at her own table every morning for coffee in the local cafe.
Despite the hard work of cooking, cleaning, raising children and helping with the farm, Marr Bowman was not a complainer.
“In fact, she was the most upbeat person I ever knew,” said Michael Bowman.
But, sometimes, she did remark, “Anyone who thought those were the good old days didn’t actually live through them.”
Marr Bowman and her husband toughed out the Depression, but they and their good friends, Dale and Martha Whomble, had to wait some time before they could buy new cars.
After discussing it one evening, the couples decided on a stopgap measure: They would trade cars, so at least each couple would have a different car.
In addition to her family, Marr Bowman’s other great love was bowling, which she did for decades at the Purple Sage Bowling Alley. After it was destroyed in a 1970s tornado, she and her friends had to drive to other towns to bowl.
Eva Peterson was born June 13, 1911, in Holyoke and graduated from Laird High School, east of Wray.
She met Ralph Bowman, a local farm boy, at Olive Lake, a resort area near Wray that had a dance hall and skating rink. “It was a hotbed of activity in those days,” Michael Bowman said.
Eva Peterson and Ralph Bowman married May 16, 1931, and started their life together with gifts of a pig and a cow, which their families had given them. He died in January 2004.
In addition to her grandson, Marr Bowman is survived by two daughters, Jean Brophy of Wray and Jerry Baird of Pasadena, Calif.; a son, Jack Bowman of Wray; 10 grandchildren; 22 great-grandchildren; her sister, Madge Barber of Burlington; and an “adopted” grandson, Etienne Lagabrielle of France.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-820-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
