Leading specialist in respiratory medicine

(first published in the Irish Times February 15th 2014)

by Anton McCabe

Roger Clark Lowry - born September 20^th 1933, died January 30^th 2014-02-11

Roger Lowry, who has died after a long illness, was one of the North’s leading specialists in respiratory medicine. For more than a generation he was central to the work of the Chest, Heart and Stroke Association, being Chairman for almost 30 years.

Medicine was not his first calling. He graduated in economics from Queen’s University, Belfast, then worked for a year in his father’s accountancy firm. Accountancy was not for him, though, and he returned to Queen’s to study medicine.

Roger Clark Lowry was born in Belfast in September 1933, third of four sons to Harry Lowry, an accountant, scout for several English First Division football teams, and former manager of Glentoran and Bangor football teams: and his wife Evelyn (née Blair), a primary teacher. The parents raised their sons in an atmosphere of tolerance. Methodism was central to all their lives.

Because of German bomber raids on Belfast, the Lowrys moved to the Co Down countryside, between Killyleagh and Crossgar. There, Lowry attended the tiny Ballytrim Public Elementary School, then Down High School in Downpatrick, before completing secondary education at Campbell College on the family’s return to Belfast.

From those early years, he excelled in cricket, tennis, squash, and golf, even taking up horse-riding for a period. His hand-eye coordination was excellent.

Lowry was also adventurous. While a student he worked as a bell-boy for a summer in a hotel in Alberta, Canada. Afterwards he hitch-hiked over 5,000 kilometres to southern Florida, where a brother was working. He found d the best way to get lifts was to be well-dressed and carry a rolled-up umbrella.

Shortly after qualifying as a doctor, he met and married Joan Smith, a nurse from Monaghan: then undertook postgraduate studies in London and the United States, before setting up home in Newtownards. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of both England and Ireland. He ended a distinguished career as head of the Respiratory Investigation Centre at Belfast City Hospital. Lowry had been a smoker, but grasped the dangers of smoking early in his career. This understanding made him an evangelist for non-smoking, firstly and successfully preaching that gospel to his brothers.

Despite his achievements, he did not take self seriously. Lowry will be remembered as gregarious man. This was despite developing Parkinson’s Disease soon after retiring. At Lowry’s funeral in Knock Methodist Church, his friend Rev David Cooper summed up his life with the line from Seamus Heaney: “Steady under strain and strong through tension.”

He is survived by his wife, Joan: daughter Julie: sons Kevin, Michael, Peter, and Alan: brothers John, Sidney and Eric: and grandchildren.