When visitors come to the Tennessee Williams House Museum and Welcome Center, they’re typically welcomed with a sweet voice, a warm smile and a question intended to start a conversation. For 14 years, that greeting has come from Carolyn Lowry.
Lowry, 88, will retire Thursday after more than a decade of serving as a quiet ambassador for the city, sharing the home’s history on tours and listening to the stories of visitors from across the world – from Norway to France to South Africa and New Zealand, to name a few.
“Everybody wants to be heard, and almost everybody has a story,” Lowry said. “It may be small, (but) if you just give them a little audience, you connect, and you can feel it when you connect.”
Lowry was born and raised in Clinton, Indiana, a rural farming town that bustled with coal-mining around the turn of the 20th century. After graduating high school, she met and married her husband Montelle or “Monty.”
“We always laughed – he was a town guy, and I was a country girl,” Lowry said of Monty, who passed away in 2015.
In Clinton, the couple was friends with a Methodist pastor, who had previously lived in Mississippi, and encouraged them to consider moving there. After Monty, a contractor, landed a contract to work on a housing project, the Lowrys – and their three children Kenneth, Karen and Kelley – made the move to Columbus by 1973.
“We came not knowing anything about Columbus, not having any connection at all, but liked it, learned to love it, and it became home,” she said. “Our children grew up here, and they’ve said many times … it became home to them too.”
The family settled in East Columbus, and Lowry landed a job as a decorator for the Sherwin Williams store – one of many roles in which she honed her skills working with the public, including a stint as a manager at a lighting store and one working in radio sales.
In 2000, Lowry and her husband moved back to Indiana to care for her parents before coming back to Columbus in 2008. A few years later, a friend put her in touch with Nancy Carpenter, CEO of the Columbus Cultural Heritage Foundation, about working at the Tennessee Williams House. A few weeks later, which just so happened to be during the spring Pilgrimage, Lowry checked back in about the role.
“I came in, and (Carpenter) was so busy. She said, ‘Can you start tomorrow?’” Lowry said. “And that was my beginning.”
Caring enough to be involved
In the years since, Lowry has spent her day-to-day greeting visitors, asking them about their travels and searching for cues to know how she could make a connection with each person.
“I find most people are nice,” she said. “They may have up a guard for some reason, but most people are very nice. … Once in a while there will be someone who throws mud on something, but even that, you can deal with it and figure that’s their problem that you wish they didn’t have.”
After learning a bit about her visitors, Lowry explains the history of the home, notably how it was moved from its original location on College Street to its current address on Main. That effort, Lowry believes, was a catalyst for what she describes as a “spirit of preservation” in Columbus.
“Stop and think how many big banks you see (in town). … For every one of those banks, they tore down a house, a hospital or a church,” she said. “We sacrificed something that probably should have been and could have been saved, but nobody stepped in at that time. This effort (preserving the Tennessee Williams House) … was a wake-up call. You can still buy prime property, but they can’t just tear it down.”
Throughout her tenure at the home, Lowry is sure her favorite part has been working with the people who come through its doors. When each day starts with the same routine of waking up, getting ready and going to work, Lowry finds the most joy in the different interactions she has with the visitors, often finding herself having a better day because of them.
All of it, Lowry said, feeds into her philosophy on what it takes to be a part of a community.
“You get out of a community what you put in it,” she said. “And if you’re complaining about the school system, or you’re complaining about the garbage pickup or any of those things that, for some reason, our society has come to expect, … they don’t realize they have a little obligation in that. I’m not saying they have to earn it, but you don’t sit still and just expect it to come to you. You care enough to be involved at some level and for some period of time.”
Reflecting on working with Lowry, Carpenter describes their relationship as more of a friendship after so many years, always taking care of each other through the “losses and changes” of life, she said.
“We’re going to miss her terribly, but I’m so happy for her to be able to enjoy her family,” Carpenter told The Dispatch. “… She is a gracious, dependable, dear person and friend. She’s not just an employee, she’s really a wonderful friend.”
On Thursday, the public is invited to a reception honoring Lowry from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Tennessee Williams House, where there will be hot cider and cookies.
“Anybody that would like to come by and thank her for being so gracious to their school groups or the family reunions, or whomever,” Carpenter said.
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 34 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
