Granby Living August2019

CELEBRATING OUR SENIORS
Duncan and Marian Rowles, Capetown, South Africa 2012
DUNCAN ROWLES
MAKES VOLUNTEERING A PRIORITY
By Sarah Merrill
Duncan and Marian (Levkus)
Rowles moved to Granby in 1978.
They built a home on Farmview
Lane and later bought additional
land abutting their property.
Today they enjoy over 10 acres,
crowned by Marian’s beautiful
gardens — an idyllic spot to sit
and watch the birds. Although it
doesn’t seem that Duncan often
sits still.
Duncan was born in 1941 and
began his childhood in Oak Park,
Illinois, a busy suburb of Chicago.
But when his father, Duncan
Rowles Sr., retired, the family
moved permanently to their rural
summer home in the little town
of Grand Detour, about 100 miles
west of Chicago, surrounded on
three sides by the Rock River. The
town is perhaps most famous as
the place where John Deere invented
the first steel-bladed plow
in 1837.
“My younger sister and I lived
the life of Tom Sawyer and Huck
Celebrating Our Seniors is sponsored by McLean
Finn,” says Duncan. “We were
always on the river. It was the type
of childhood where you could be
gone all day and nobody worried.
And when dusk came, every
family had its own way of calling
their children home. Our mother
[Marion Cunnard Rowles] had a
cow bell.”
The move to Grand Detour
meant transitioning from a large,
urban grade school to a small tworoom
schoolhouse.
“I was just starting fifth grade
and the school experience was
very different. We had four grades
in one room! Our ‘library’ was the
World Book Encyclopedia. Over
the course of two years I read
most of the World Book,” laughs
Duncan. “This probably contributed
to my love of trivia!”
Duncan attended Knox College
in Galesburg, Illinois, about 100
miles from home. He joined the
U.S. Navy Reserve, completed
Reserve Officer Candidate School,
and shortly after graduating
from college in 1963, received his
commission. Duncan spent the
next four years on active duty,
primarily on a ship stationed on
the West Coast, including a couple
of West-Pac trips.
Duncan was born just seven
days before the bombing of Pearl
Harbor. As the war continued, it
“didn’t weigh heavily on us,” he
says, because he and his siblings
were just kids.
A young Duncan Rowles,
circa 1945
Duncan’s father had served in
the Army in World War I, and his
grandfather had been a medical
officer in the Army in the late
1800s. While there was something
of a service tradition, says Duncan,
“My father was very sincere
about me not going into the Army.
He figured that when you’re in the
Navy, you at least have three meals
a day and a dry bed — unless your
ship sinks, of course.”
Duncan’s work with the Navy
led to his first job with Pratt &
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8 | AUGUST 2019