Lois Bowman
Lois Alene Bowman, formerly of Greenfield and Sunderland, passed away on December 18, 2022, at the High Pointe House Hospice in Haverhill, Massachusetts, surrounded in her final days by her loving family.
Lois was born in Chattanooga, on Sept. 28, 1951, to Emmett Arnold Bowman and Wilma Faye Jackson. She attended high school in Norwalk and Compton, California, and earned her BA in Human Services from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst at the age of 55.
After raising her two children, Lois embarked on a long career of service to others. For the next 20 years she served in a variety of emergency medicine roles, including ER technician, EMT, Paramedic, ambulance company manager, and ER Admissions Coordinator. Her emergency medicine career began in Medford OR and was completed in Western MA. For the next decade in MA Lois continued her service to others as a crisis counselor for victims of domestic and sexual assault, and then as courtroom advocate for domestic violence victims. In these later years Lois also volunteered for one year as AmeriCorps member serving at-risk youth in Franklin County. She also journeyed back to the Portland OR area and volunteered for nine 9 months for another domestic violence prevention program.
Lois's interests included Shin Buddhism, the poetry of Rumi, visiting the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, long country drives (in Western MA, the Catskills in NY, the Green Mountains and Lake Champlain Islands of VT), and listening to the classic music of the Bee Gees, Sam Brown, Otis Reading, and the Temptations. She loved a wide array of old and new classic movies, ranging from Miracle on 34th Street and It's a Wonderful Life to In Harm's Way and The Godfather, as well as binge watching older TV mini-series such as Centennial and the Winds of War, and many of the British detective and crime series such as Shetland. Lois loved spending time with family and friends and had a wonderful sense of humor - even laughing at her husband David's constant "dad jokes". Above all, Lois enjoyed helping others, and she found different ways to do this over the years, both in her jobs and volunteer work.
She is survived by her husband, David Voegele-Albin (Amesbury MA); her daughter Cheri Woods-Edwin and husband Brandt (Portland OR), and Scott Woods and wife Megan (Portland OR); daughter-by-marriage Elinor Albin and husband George Eichman IV (Amesbury MA) and son-by-marriage Hank Albin (Greenfield, MA); and grandchildren, Jakob and Samuel Edwin (Portland Oregon); Katelynn and Emmelia Woods (Boise, Idaho); and George Albin Eichman (Amesbury, Massachusetts); and many nieces and nephews. She is also survived by brothers Verne Heintzelman, John Savens, Michael Bowman, and sister Kathy Bowman Patterson. Her parents and sisters, Sherry Bowman and Helen Lynette Avila, preceded her death.
A memorial service will be scheduled in Greenfield at a later time. In lieu of flowers, donations to local domestic violence programs would best align with Lois's desire to help others.