Walter Lowrie’s kids “didn’t look forward to dinner” because they knew they’d have to report what they learned that day and then discuss a topic of their father’s choosing.
Lowrie, who died at 84 on Dec. 10, was a scientist and project manager for the two Viking landers that Lockheed Martin sent to Mars in the 1970s.
He was addicted to learning and worked to pass that on to his children.
Though the kids dreaded some of the dinner conversations, son Jim Lowrie admits that “in retrospect, I think it was a good thing. He wanted us to think critically, to think through our own convictions.”
Science was a favorite topic at the dinner table, but Lowrie also might bring up history, politics or any other subject, his son said.
“We knew we had to come up with some answers,” said Lowrie’s daughter Allison Lowrie, of Stamford, Conn. She remembers being asked why the moon goes around the Earth or why a certain thing works the way it does.
“He never stopped learning,” she said. “He thought if a person stopped learning, he would shrink and die.”
Walter Olin Lowrie was born in North Braddock, Pa., on April 7, 1924, and graduated from Mercersburg Academy in Mercersburg, Pa.
He earned a degree in aeronautical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a B-17 pilot during World War II.
While a senior at MIT, he met Dorothy Ann Williams, and they were married 60 years ago. She survives him.
When he was 30, Lowrie contracted polio. During his months-long hospitalization in Baltimore, an iron lung was kept outside his room in case he would need it. He never did.
Lowrie joined what was then Martin Marietta in 1948 in Baltimore, and he was transferred to Denver in 1956. In addition to the Viking project, Lowrie was program manager of the Titan intercontinental ballistic missile and later vice president of the space and electronics product division at Martin Marietta.
In 1977, he was given NASA’s Distinguished Public Service Medal for the Viking work.
He was transferred to the Orlando, Fla., division in 1982 and, while there, was president of the Science Center, a public facility where visitors learn about myriad science subjects.
Besides his work, Lowrie built his own boat, sailed in several regattas, built a color television from a kit and remodeled the family home.
The Lowries retired to Altamonte Springs, Fla., but kept a home near Dillon.
In addition to his wife, son and daughter, Lowrie is survived by another daughter, Susan Stavlo of Torrance, Calif., and three grandchildren.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
