Deceased January 11, 2019
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In Memory
Lowell “Bill” Monroe graduated from University School, Shaker Heights, then served two years in post-war Japan before Amherst. He joined Alpha Delta Phi and focused academically on psychology under Professor Koester.
Bill found the right job with the right company for a 33-year career with Alcoa in Pittsburgh. He and his wife Debbie, a 1954 Wheaton College graduate, raised two sons to assure a family line extending today to great-grandson, Cameron, in Denver. They moved to New Hampshire in 1998 to be closer to family in Maine and Massachusetts.
At this transitional point in life, Bill declared his personal motivation: “Don’t get old, get busy.” And so he did. Already a master of tenor banjo, he joined a trio “playing the Top 40 of the 20’s and 30’s” and a barber shop quartet. His reading choices were often non-conforming as when he completed the entire works of O. Henry “poems, letters and all.” He extended his educational reach by taking lecture courses on topics such as religion, climate change and geology. New Hampshire winters called for more than a snow blower, so Bill and Debbie joined other couples in “borrowing” friends’ ski homes for house party weekends of cross-country skiing and socializing. Bill became our Amherst class photographer with much praise for capturing the joy we all felt at reunion and October dinners. Bill’s crowning achievement was crafting fine furniture in his extensive basement filled with every imaginable woodworking tool. This furniture is now his legacy in the homes of his family.
Bill coped with COPD for years with increasing oxygen dependency to the point where he could not attend our 65th reunion. Debbie was with Bill in his skilled nursing home facility in Concord when he passed away on Jan. 11, 2019.
Dick Soder ’52 and Nick Evans ’52