Southern Service
By Colin Kleckner and Charles Lowell
Charles franklin lowell
September 3, 1929 – November 2, 2003
Charles Franklin Lowell, a Second Lieutenant during the Korean War, was born on the 3rd of September 1929, to Arthur C. Lowell and Florence C. Peterson in Independence, Missouri. Lowell would have grown up a child of the Great Depression, which hit Jackson County in 1931.[1] Nearly one-third of the workers in Independence lost their jobs overnight as three local banks failed, with the welfare rolls growing to 4,500 Independence citizens. Despite the aid of former Jackson County Judge, and eventually Senator, Harry S. Truman in creating work programs and public aid programs, it would not be until 1945 that Independence would fully recover from the Great Depression. Lowell would have grown up surrounded by poverty, although opportunities for employment would have picked up in Independence’s electrical department and appliance sector when he came of working age, two industrial areas least affected by the Great Depression.
Lowell would have been twenty-one at the outset of the Korean War, and as a commissioned officer, he would most likely have had a high school education in order to have his candidacy for officer’s school fulfilled. As a Second Lieutenant, Lowell volunteered for military service rather than becoming a non-commissioned draftee. However, Second Lieutenants, being the lowest grade of commissioned officer, were very common, and Lowell most likely did not serve long enough to be promoted to the rank of First Lieutenant before the ceasefire between North Korea and UN-backed South Korean forces. The Korean War itself was a conflict from 1950-1953 between an international coalition chiefly composed of South Korean, American and British soldiers, and a Communist North Korean regime backed by the People’s Republic of China. The conflict is still technically ongoing, with both Koreas declaring a ceasefire but never actually ending hostilities or issuing a joint declaration of peace.
Lowell was trained in the command and instruction of a platoon of anywhere from sixteen to forty soldiers, acting as a bridge between more experienced non-commissioned officers and higher levels of commissioned military command. His main duty in a non-combat setting would be the training and instruction of his platoon, overseeing and developing the training of soldiers for the intense firefighting-environments of the Korean War. Second Lieutenants where and are expected to care for their platoon’s needs, be it the attainment of new gear on base, to the acquisition of rations in the field. In combat situations, his duties would have been the implementation and completion of combat objectives laid out by higher command, be it guarding Coalition positions or leading his platoon towards combat objectives deeper into North Korean territory. Early in the war any such missions would have been attempts to reclaim lost South Korean Territory, before eventually beginning to push back and take North Korean held land.
On the 30th of July, 1955, two years after the end of the Korean War, Lowell married Emily Jay McCance,[2] in Kansas City, Missouri,[3] with whom he would eventually have a son, Mark C. Lowell, born 1961 and one other child. Lowell and his wife then moved to Mission, Kansas before eventually separating.[4] Lowell and his son would eventually take up residence in Arvada, Colorado, in 1982. He died in Arvada on November 2, 2003, at the age of seventy-four.[5] His remains were found and reclaimed by the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) Local 1071 of Denver from a funeral home in 2022, and are interred at Fort Logan National Ceremony alongside other unclaimed veterans. His recovery is part of an ongoing effort by the VVA and the University of Denver’s Honors Burial Project to recover and properly intern the thousands of cremated remains of unclaimed military veterans from funeral homes in the Denver metropolitan area.
Footnotes ↓
[1] "Growth, Depression and War - Ci.independence.mo.us.” Ci.independence.mo.com. Accessed 16 May 16, 2022. https://www.ci.independence.mo.us/userdocs/pl/Chapter4.pdf.
[2] "Missouri, U.S., Jackson County Marriage Records, 1840-1985 for Charles F. Lowell, Application for License to Marry.” Ancestry.com, entry for Charles F. Lowell. Accessed May 16, 2022. https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/1091/images/d13p_1657A0246?usePUB=true&_phsrc=Gtc239&_phstart=successSource&usePUBJs=true&pId=655151.
[3] "Missouri, U.S., Jackson County Marriage Records, 1840-1985 for Charles F Lowell, Application for License to Marry.” Ancestry.com, entry for Charles F. Lowell. Accessed May 16, 2022. https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/1091/images/d13p_1657A0246.
[4] "U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995, for Charles Franklin Lowell and Partner Jane Lowell.” Ancestry.com, entry for Charles F. Lowell. Accessed May 17, 2022.
[5] "Charles F. Lowell in Social Security Death Index.” Fold3.com, entry for Charles F. Lowell. Accessed April 12, 2022. https://www.fold3.com/record/66127546/charles-f-lowell-social-security-death-index.
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