Crittenden County Folks - Dr. Ollie T. Lowery

Crittenden Press   Aug. 12, 1938 –

In the passing of Dr. O. T. Lowery the county has lost a good citizen, and the community in which he lived has lost a public-spirited physician whose fine services will be sorely missed in the days that are ahead. 

Ollie T. Lowery, born 1883 in Tolu, Ky., was a son of T. W. and Sallie Matlock Lowery. O. T. Lowery also attended and received his medical training at the Hospital College of Medicine at Louisville, Ky. He was first married to Effie Parker of Salem. They had two sons, Thomas Wood, and Guy Allen. Effie died in 1922 and Dr. Lowery later married Jennie Pell Houston of Carrsville.

After serving in World War I, he opened an office in Marion but later moved back to his hometown of Tolu to be near his family.

Dr. Lowery’s obituary tells of his tragic death at his home in Tolu. Crittenden Press, August 12, 1938. Dr. Ollie T. Lowery, prominent physician, was accidentally killed by his own gun early Sunday morning at his home in Tolu.

Having been absent from his home at the bedside of a son in a Memphis, Tenn., hospital, Dr. Lowery was advised that his chickens were being killed by some unknown cause. Hearing a noise in the chicken house early Sunday morning, he aroused his housekeeper and the two of them went to the structure, about 75 feet from the house. Dr. Lowery took with him a .38 caliber pistol.

Upon reaching the chicken house he instructed the housekeeper to watch the outside of the building and see if a mink should escape through several holes in the foundation and walls. The housekeeper did as told and Dr. Lowery went into the building. Shortly thereafter the report of a gun was heard and Dr. Lowery moaned. Rushing into the building the housekeeper found her employer dead.

Spreading the alarm, nearby resident’s came to her assistance and the body was removed to the house. Coroner C. T. Boucher, Co, Atty. Stone and Sheriff J. E. Perry were notified and rushed to the scene. Boucher conducted an inquest and the jury returned a verdict of accidental death.

Survivors are five sons: Tom, Detroit, Guy, John, Herman and Ollie, all of Tolu; a brother Leonard, Sturgis, and a sister Mrs. Tom George, Salem. 

Dr. Lowery was a respected and loved family Dr. of Tolu. He never had office hours or appointments; he was on call when anyone needed him. In his last years, he wrote his prescriptions, filling them from his own drug room. He made house calls when needed, day or night. His referrals to a hospital for surgery were accurate, and his diagnoses were without any modern tests. Many remember how he stayed by a bedside, or the times he put the patients in his own car, took them to the hospital and stayed there until they were better. He was a comfort to the patient and also the patient’s family.

These old time doctors of long ago deserve a lot of credit. Dark nights, mud, roads, rain, snow, sleet, hail, wind and storm are but trifles in the lives of most of them, but for the average doctor back then, they were conditions, many times repeated, which must be met and endured. Irregular hours, sleepless nights, long grinds of watchful waiting, all were but parts of the day’s work for the average doctor in the small town and rural communities of yesteryear.