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James Lowe Obituary
James Wesley Lowe, 68, son of John Kirby Lowe Jr., and Elisabeth N. Lowe, passed away peacefully of natural causes at his home in Santa Monica, CA. He will be missed beyond understanding by his family, including his six remaining siblings in the Atlanta area, and his many friends and acquaintances in California and Georgia.
James had a 45-plus-year career in the hospitality industry, working as a server for the finest restaurants in Atlanta, San Diego, Los Angeles, La Jolla, and Santa Monica. These spanned the Westin Peachtree Plaza to the Ritz Carlton La Jolla. His customers loved him for his professionalism and sunny demeanor.
In addition to his six siblings, Susan, John, Eva, Guy, Bessie, and Mary, James is survived by his brothers-in-law, John and Ray; numerous nieces and nephews, and countless friends and acquaintances across the nation, including Colin Hadlow and Steve Bolan of Orange County, CA.
Santa Monica's Woodlawn Cemetery managed the scattering-at-sea of Mr. Lowe's ashes. And family members held a remembrance at California's Mugu Rock.
James:
May the longtime sun shine upon you, all love surround you, and the sweet light within you guide your way on.
To plant trees in memory, please visit the Sympathy Store.
Memories and Condolences
for James Lowe
Guy R. Lowe
June 22, 2025
Sending love
Guy R. Lowe
April 13, 2025
Sending love this Easter Week
Guy R. Lowe
March 15, 2025
So miss you. Love
Guy R. Lowe
March 2, 2025
Hi, Wes.
Guy R. Lowe
February 25, 2025
I´m thinking of - and so missing - you. Sending love.
Guy R. Lowe
February 3, 2025
Thinking of you today - as always.
Bessie
January 22, 2025
Thinking of you Weck with fun memories and much Love... hug Mama & Billy Bear for me!!
Guy
January 17, 2025
Hey, Wes
guy
January 10, 2025
Just saying hi
Marcie K Topping
January 2, 2025
Reaching out to all to say I can only imagine how sorrowful of a hurt this festive season has been. I am thinking of you all. Since many have continued to post Wesley memories, please indulge me as I do the same. First off, I called him Wesley, Wec, and more specifically, my nickname for Wesley was , "Weckyl." Susan- our High School Teacher that we knew as Ms. Feagle came out to Lynda and me at the end of class one day and said her 2 brothers were transferring from Smiths Station to Central and Please, would we Please reach out to them and be friendly, that they knew NO one at Central, it was mid year and was concerned about how difficult it would be for them coming to a brand new school, mid year, AND, knowing no one. Well of course Lynda and I were ready to obliged. We were both raised to be kind and inclusive to those we did not know. Not to mention our very own teacher thought enough of us out of the whole class to pull us aside and ask us to reach out to her brothers. Wow! How impressive we thought, this teacher must really like us! That alone made us feel about 10 feet tall and way above the rest. Lynda and I even talked about. We wondered what her brothers would be like, their likes, interests. We were hoping they would be easy to talk too. The next week, Ms Feagle introduced us to Guy and Wesley. I remember it to this day. It was easy to meet them and easy for them to meet us- instantly. It's like we had Always known them from the minute we met. And so it began Our journeys, adventures, laughs and paths were now entwined. Just that quick. So our Weckyl slipped away. He's now on the grandest adventure ever. I miss you Wesley- my happy go luck Weckyl. For the sake of time, I will will close- but be back with a story or two. And please overlook the typos- not easy navigating small block of space.
Bessie Lamica
January 1, 2025
Happy New Eternity Weckles! We Love You!
Guy R. Lowe
December 30, 2024
Guy
December 30, 2024
Guy
December 30, 2024
Guy
December 29, 2024
Guy
December 28, 2024
Thinking of you as 2025 approaches
Bessie
December 25, 2024
Merry Merry Christmas Wesley! I Love You
Guy
December 23, 2024
Guy
December 22, 2024
Guy
December 22, 2024
It´s Sunday, 6:06 EST - for 15+ years, Wes and I talked by phone at 6:00 sharp each Sunday. Sometimes for two+ hours. I so miss him.
Guy
December 22, 2024
Guy
December 21, 2024
Mom, Bill and Wes passed near the holidays - Mom 2018, Bill 2021 and Wes 2024. Merry Christmas in Heaven, Mom, Bill and Wes.
Guy R. Lowe
December 20, 2024
Wes, I added the Christmas card Bess sent me to your memorial here at home.
Guy R. Lowe
December 20, 2024
Wes, I had pictures framed as one large wall hanging of our trip to California to put you to rest.
Guy R. Lowe
December 18, 2024
Wes, as I´m sure you can see from Heaven, I made a little area at home commemorating your life. The area includes the cross we shared, your urn, a room key to the Hilton (commemorating our trip to help you rest) - and a little eagle Bess had given me. War Eagle!
Guy
December 17, 2024
Wes, as Christmas approaches, I think of our many trips back home - you coming from Santa Monica, me from NYC. We always found time to spend together - even if it was just drives through the neighborhood lights. Atlanta, Cumming, GA, Helen, GA - always precious times.
Guy
December 16, 2024
Thinking of you today and always. Wes, I put up on my wall the cross I gave you 30 years ago - it´ll always remind me of you. Love.
Susan E. Lowe
December 15, 2024
Thank you to Wesley's friends. One of the benefits of being part of a large family is that the friends of siblings who stay around a couple of decades or more become like friends to all the other siblings. We do not share acts or words shared in confidence, but we do keep abreast of major happenings and whereabouts of those friends who endure. We feel a kind of kinship with them.
For example, we may never have met Colin or others who were longtime friends of Wesley and with whom he shared many holidays when Wesley did not come home to Atlanta. I felt safer for Wesley, knowing who his friends were and what they were like. Wesley even gained another friend in recent years, making the acquaintance of a Hungarian women who lived in his building. Not all older people develop friendships in their later years. Debbie has been Bessie's long time friend of many decades as has Marcie been friend to Guy and Wesley for many years. Marcie I first knew as a student of mine when I taught at Central High 50+years ago. It has been a pleasure to hear from Guy about her success in media throughout her career. She was a student who brought to the sponsor's attention the need for space about contemporary music in the school newspaper. She wrote most of it.
The memories of friends and relatives and in-laws over the years renders life well worth living. Those that involve our high school friends remain always close in mind, especially when refreshed by happenings in the daily course of life. The photos that Guy and Eva have attached I think well convey how close we sisters and brothers have been most of our lives.
You may know of Bill and John, Eva and Bessie and Wesley as purveyors of art at one or more periods of time as well as Mary's husband. Bill was the mega personality who moved the gallery onto the stage that was Atlanta and for a shorter period of time in LA and Santa Monica. How grateful we all have been, but Wesley is the one who led the way to California as well as to Atlanta. What a pioneer he was. As Eva was a traveler, John a promoter, Bill a curator if talent, Wesley truly provided the example for moving forward in time to new and different locations for adventure.
We brothers and sisters did have the advantage of grandparents in "the Delta" (- if you don't know where that is - think of heat,
humidity, cotton and Tom Sawyer). Guy, it turns out, is the artist as any one of you who reads this legacy page can tell. Through technical achievement in rendering photos, videos and songs that fine-tune our memories of Wesley and others of us on the family occasions together and apart. Fortunately, Mary and Bessie have also provided the family with youngsters whom we love very much and for whom we are very grateful. Fortunately, in the early days of our careers, John did the honors in that area. Those we do not see regularly, we know are there - wherever they may be - in our hearts.
Our mother, "Mama Lowe" aka GMom and GG to the younger generations, was shared by us all with all our dear friends over the years. She was the most immediate source, and origin, of Europe for us kids in the family. Thank goodness our father [ "Daddy" in Southern-ese] traveled with the U.S. armed forces to find our mother. Thank goodness for her uncles and cousins who survived with her the displaced person camps of WWII. Thank goodness for their visits with us when we were teenagers in AL and in GA.
Between our parents, grandparents and uncles and cousins, plus the lessons of our grandfather and father about geography, we acquired much more information as well as some understanding
about the relationship of our country to the rest of the world. I hope this country does not fail to appreciate the impact of the world upon us all, for better and for worse.
Wesley was, like all his siblings, heir to these facts and the compassion we learned about those different from us. Our American grandparents were gracious to our mother and never spoke ill of any of us from the moment we were born. Three of us were born in MS, Wesley sandwiched between Bessie and Guy. Our youngest, Mary Lou, was the sole child who was born in a state other than GA or MS. Her birthplace was AL.
Legacy is important as a primary influence upon our inclinations and preferences. And as I am "the oldest" of our family now living, I tend to view us all as parts of one another and of the world as a whole. Our parents reared us to be independent individuals, but all our friends know of the varied threads that wove our family together.
Wesley a pioneer and he was brave. He embraced us all as we did him and one another. The photos of Guy and Wesley that are included in the postings in this Legacy convey I think quite clearly and poignantly how dear Wesley was to us. For me, at least, Wesley was not only a chum but also an example.
Just as our mother had the wits and courage to leave her world and create ours with our father, Wesley had the wits and courage to migrate to a place better suited to his interests and strengths - in a beautiful and temperate climate year around.
Wesley began by joining Guy in a move from one school system to another. Thank goodness for the strength of a foreign born mother to both reprimand school authorities for bad judgment and to move her embattled sons to a different school system. It is never the right thing to do to eject students from school, especially when spaced to coincide with exam periods, the net result being missed exams with no makeups, hence lower grades.
The obtuseness of many parents and school authorities in the 1960s is well-known and well-documented in media and history books. Long hair on boys was one unnecessary and bigoted focus for some. Protests, even peaceful protests, were another. However, Wesley as an example, never let a wrong committed to him give rise to a wrong committed by him against another person.
Wesley had a sturdy, a stalwart spirit. When he and Guy were transferred 20 miles out of school range from their home - a not atypical occurrence during the era of court-monitored integration of the public schools - he gamely continued on the path of wisdom.
None of us children were so self-identified that we would add insult to injury to ourselves by rebelling against unfairness. But more than that, Wesley was brave. In the years of early adulthood, he was prepared to support a sibling who ordered physically fit football players from the premises of the family home. Told to get the shotgun by an elder sibling when an intemperate boyfriend failed to heed a warning to depart the premises, Wesley immediately assisted by getting the gun.
Perhaps a person unfamiliar with guns, exacerbated and unfair anger, and that anger emanating from two fellows twice the size,
strength and weight of Wesley and his female sibling can question the propriety of putting two men in peak physical condition to a test of wills. When, however, the men, young though they may have been, were claiming a right to enter a home when younger people were alone at home in a big house, without a parent or other older person on the premises, then words, actions and behavior may well have presented a need to become more emphatic.
Although perhaps barely thirteen years of age, Wesley Immediately brought the gun to the older sibling to encourage the two young men. One of them at least recognized the imminent threat that they themselves appeared to represent to the siblings and led the two away.
On at least two other occasions in different places, times and circumstances, Wesley made decisions that were wise for the long-term, foreseeable consequences to him or another person in peril. This was the case when a cabbie refused to let Wesley retrieve money for payment, opting to shoot him in the leg. The cabbie was paid, but how thoroughly frightened the cabbie must have been. This was during the timeframe of the young black boys being murdered in Atlanta.
A phrase comes to my mind. "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din." It may be a paraphrasing of the language in a poem of the same name, but I find it suits certain people at certain times who are "disrespected" [a word that an English teacher can hate ...] --- at a minimum ... when embattled and mistreated. Gunga Din may have been an Indian man in service to British soldiers, but he survived battles, especially the last one in which the regiment was engaged, due to his strength of mind - when armed men were dying right and left.
Moments like these and many more moments of love, support and courage are remembered in the history and lore of Wesley's family. We loved him and we always will.
Perhaps it makes a certain kind of sense that Wesley, Bill and Mama all died close to the Christmas season, Mama and Bill on Christmas Eve and two days after Christmas, respectively. Christmas-tide is the season of peace and joy, and I for one am pleased to remember them together in love as the season unfolds. Many years separated these deaths from those of our father and grandparents decades before, but we have had the benefit of remembering these earlier deaths - most of them -together as remaining family. That too is a joy, isn't it? And we also benefit from knowing that Wesley departed us peacefully in his sleep in his own comfortable recliner in his own home. I am thankful for that, and I am thankful for Wesley, our youngest brother.
Guy
December 14, 2024
Guy
December 14, 2024
Guy
December 14, 2024
Guy
December 14, 2024
Guy
December 14, 2024
Guy
December 14, 2024
Guy
December 14, 2024
Guy
December 14, 2024
Guy
December 14, 2024
Guy
December 14, 2024
Guy
December 13, 2024
Guy
December 13, 2024
Guy
December 13, 2024
James Lamica
December 13, 2024
Thank you for all the fun, love, and memories. I´m so glad you were able to shine your light in my son Eli´s, life as well. You will be missed.
Guy R. Lowe
December 13, 2024
Guy R. Lowe
December 12, 2024
Guy R. Lowe
December 12, 2024
Guy R. Lowe
December 12, 2024
Guy R. Lowe
December 12, 2024
Guy R. Lowe
December 12, 2024
Guy R. Lowe
December 12, 2024
Guy R. Lowe
December 12, 2024
Guy R. Lowe
December 12, 2024
Guy R. Lowe
December 12, 2024
Bessie Lowe
December 12, 2024
Marcie (Nagem Topping)
December 12, 2024
Here is another memory of my friend. My nickname for him was Weckyl. Find myself thinking of him throughout the day even though many years since saw him. Some people occupy an endless space in our heart. Do not have sufficient words to express my sorrow- my words won't speak. This inseparable loss for you dear family is beyond understanding. Much love,
From Marcie
Guy R. Lowe
December 12, 2024
Guy R. Lowe
December 12, 2024
Guy R. Lowe
December 12, 2024
Guy R. Lowe
December 12, 2024
Guy R. Lowe
December 12, 2024
Guy R. Lowe
December 12, 2024
Eva Lowe
December 12, 2024
Guy R. Lowe
December 12, 2024
Eva Lowe
December 12, 2024
Guy R. Lowe
December 12, 2024
Eva Lowe
December 12, 2024
Eva Lowe
December 12, 2024
Guy R. Lowe
December 12, 2024
Eva Lowe
December 12, 2024
Guy R. Lowe
December 11, 2024
Eva Lowe
December 11, 2024
For Wesley,
You have always been there to welcome in San Diego, La Jolle, L.A., and Santa Monica. Whenever I arrived you´d be there at the airport to greet me with a warm smile and a hug. We had so many wonderful dinners together just reminiscing about family times together and laughing about all our many adventures together.
Spending time in Boston with Guy was so easy. No stress. Roaming up to Rhode Island and upper Massachusetts to Plymouth Rock to see the Mayflower and where the Pilgrims landed then to soooky Salem. We stayed in Guy´s apartment´s extra space. I have many photos of our trip.
Photos move the heart. But nothing moves my heart more than you. Your kindness, your acceptance, Wesley, your courage to keep on keeping on.
Our many days at the gallery in Santa Monica with Bill...laughing & giggling about "how the heck did we get here"? And the weird artists and the free food & wine crazies....
Our breakfasts at the park...dinners at The Inn and on the terrace at The Georgian...Lunches at Back on the Beach! Driving up PCH to Malibu blasting music in Bill´s huge Mercedes...Bill always made us drive after dinner when you & I were so ready for bed. I miss all of our happy visits to Johnny Rockets on the Promenade...we always split a milkshake.
Wesley, where did you go? You´re in the exact same place where you and I returned Bill´s ashes...right there at Mugu in the sea with Bill.
I´ll never forget our last two dinners together at Moonshadow. We loved those crab cakes.
Dear Wesley, I cherish every moment with you. You never judged me, only loved me, and I you. Rest well. See you in in the warm sunshine and in the heavens above Santa Monica & our Malibu
Guy R. Lowe
December 11, 2024
Guy R Lowe
December 11, 2024
Guy R. Lowe
December 11, 2024
Wes & I at the Met, NYC, c. 1993
Guy Lowe
December 11, 2024
Dear Wes, I so miss you. I miss our time walking to the movies when were seven or eight — often cowboys and Ancient Tales; I miss the early years at the Y in Anniston; I miss going through school in the same classes because of the closeness of our ages. Woodstock, Wynnton, Smiths, Central High. Wes, I miss playing Romans and Army, softball in the pasture; building forts; I miss swinging, swinging, swinging at Wynnton Elementary; of battling through the bullies at Smiths; of skipping school; of transferring to Central, where we both had new beginnings; of meeting Marcie, and Lynda and Donald and Nancy and Larry. I miss our embarrassing Disco days; our crazy party days in Atlanta; our visits in San Diego, L.A. Santa Monica and San Francisco. I miss those wonderful times you came to see me in New York - when we chased down the tour bus to marvel at the Great City; when walked in Central Park and went to the small theatre to see the blue-painted actors; went to Lincoln Center to hear an orchestra and Times Square on New Year´s Eve. I miss our corny tour of the stars´ homes in Beverly Hills, our visit to the Getty Museum, the Santa Monica Park and Pier on the Fourth of July; the concert at the Hollywood Bowl; when you had surgery in L.A. and we healed together. I miss all your visits back to Atlanta once I´d returned. Wes, perhaps most of all I miss our Sunday phone calls - always at 6 P.M. EST on the dot - for 15 years. Everything from culture to Auburn football to politics to business to technology to our health and doings - always always for at least an hour, often longer. Most of all, I miss you as a magnificent human being: loving son to Mom and Dad, truly lovely brother - caring, clear-eyed, funny, silly, serious, wise. Wise. Soulful. I miss YOU, Wes. All that was you and your beautiful being. Your kindness - most people don´t know that you sent me money when times got very hard in New York. It was money you really could have used for other things, but chose instead to help me. I miss you. Yes, I miss you. I miss everything about you, and always will. I don´t have that much more time on this earth,
I´m sure - it´s not like I´m 25. But what time I DO have will be spent in large part reflecting on and missing you. Yes, Wes, I just plain, deeply, viscerally miss you. I always will.
Mary Lowe
December 11, 2024
Wesley, you are missed more than words can describe
Bessie
December 10, 2024
Dear Sweet Wesley, you're funny humor, gentle kindness, complete acceptance of all, and your forever unique swagger & style will forever be remembered and treasured. I shall always treasure our shared childhood, ridiculous teenage years and our high risk & funny youthful indiscretions. I know you are now joined by Bill & Mama and you all are singing & dancing in magnificent ways. I Love You Always & Forever Wesley. PS. Thank you for so willingly and lovingly taking me to my Jr./Sr. prom. You were a special brother then and remained so our whole life. I will miss you greatly my Dear Sweet Wesley.
Guy Lowe
December 10, 2024
Thank you, Colin and Steve
ColinHadlow
December 9, 2024
In loving memory of a wonderful person. We will love you and miss you always.
Guy Lowe
December 9, 2024
Thank you, Marcie.
Marcie Nagem Topping
December 9, 2024
There has never been a time- ever that I saw Wesley that my heart was not full of love for him. I can see his arms open wide, his big smile, and I can feel his hug. I wish I could find words to comfort you all. Know that you are in my heart.
Marcie (Nagem Topping)
Guy Lowe
December 9, 2024
Thank you, Lynda.
Lynda Striplin
December 9, 2024
I was so sad to hear about Wesley's death. Even though it has been years since I say Wesley I thought of him often. Wesley and I went to school together. I will always remember his beautiful smile, infectious laugh and also the long curly hair he had when we were in school. My heart goes out to his siblings on the death of their beloved brother. With deepest sympathy, Lynda Holton Striplin
Guy Lowe
December 7, 2024
I miss you terribly, dear brother.
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