JOHN BOWERS

BOWERS--John William. John William Bowers died Sunday, August 17, in New York City. He was 97. John was raised in Johnson City, TN. He grew up surrounded by books. At age twelve his mother gave him an Underwood portable typewriter. He had his first story, "Good Luck Joe" published in Matrix, a Philadelphia literary magazine, when he was fourteen. After high school John served in the regular army in the post World War II occupation of Korea. He then attended the University of Tennessee on the GI bill, graduating with a BA in English and a fierce determination both to write and to leave Tennessee. He spent over a year at a writing colony in Marshall, Illinois where James Jones, fresh from the success of From Here to Eternity was ensconced. Thereafter, he traveled west, and worked as a gas station attendant and taxi driver in L.A., and as a shill at a casino in Calneva. He then moved to Washington DC where he worked in personnel for the State Department but his ultimate goal was to get to New York. In 1962, John landed a job at Magazine Management where he and Mario Puzo dreamt up stories of sex and war for a series of girlie magazines that populated newsstands in the late 50s and 60s. He soon discovered writing freelance was more lucrative. In 1971 he published his first novel/memoir, The Colony, about the colony in Marshall IL to critical acclaim. In the course of his sixty years in New York, John published nine books and had over 200 magazine articles, essays, and stories published in New York's major magazines; his play, Remembrance of Things Present, was twice produced Off-Broadway; and he taught creative nonfiction writing at NY State University at Stony Brook, Columbia University and most recently at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, PA. John Bowers is survived by his first wife, Lis Harris, their two sons, Nicholas and David Bowers, and four grandchildren, Sydney, Thomas, Claudia and Samantha Bowers; and by his second wife, Leslie Armstrong, three stepchildren, Vanessa Cortesi, Sinclair Smith and Helen Priester and one stepgrandson, Henry Richardson Smith. A memorial service will be held in the fall on a date still to be determined.