The Lowes of Deerfield have come full circle

ALBANY, Ga. — In 1969, then-Deerfield-Windsor School headmaster Graham Lowe asked his wife, Betty, if she would be interested in teaching middle school math and science at the nascent private school.

Betty said OK, but with one caveat.

“I told him we’d try to work together for a year, but we agreed if it didn’t work out that I’d go someplace else,” she recalled.

The arrangement worked well enough to last for more than four decades. Fittingly enough, the Lowes, who have been married for 60 years this August, will retire together at the end of the school year.

They have come full circle.

The long journey of Betty, 79, and Graham, 80, began in 1952 as students at North Georgia College in Dahlonega. Graham was smitten the first time he laid eyes on the comely lass from Albany.

“I was nervous about asking her out, so I asked a friend of mine from Albany if he would ask her out for me,” Graham said.

Betty told the friend, “If he wants to go on a date with me, he can ask me himself.”

Graham summoned up the courage, and the couple married four months later.

From 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. today, the Lowes’ children, Mike, Mary and Allen, will throw a retirement party for their parents at Merry Acres Restaurant. All of their friends are invited.

After a two-year hitch in the Army, Graham Lowe was hired as a coach at Albany Junior High in 1954. Three years later he became the head basketball coach and French teacher at Albany High.

In 1966, Lowe got a call from a friend, Spec Dozier, who was in the process of creating one of the first private schools in Southwest Georgia.

“Spec called me and said, ‘Graham, I am going to offer you a job that I wouldn’t take myself. We don’t even have a building yet, but we will,'” Lowe recalled.

The job was the first headmaster’s position at Deerfield-Windsor on Stuart Avenue. In 1970, he became the school’s first head football coach.

Graham and Betty moved to Camilla in 1977 when he became headmaster at Westwood School.

“I left because I found out I couldn’t send kids to college on a headmaster’s salary in Albany,” Lowe said of the move to Westwood. “I thought coaching was out of the picture for me when a year later the football coach told me he didn’t want to coach anymore, so I became the coach and did it for 17 more years.”

In the meantime, Lowe finally achieved a longtime goal — he learned to fly.

“In 1986, I had an aunt die and she left us $19,000,” Lowe recalled. “I said, ‘Betty, we’ll never see this much money again in our lives. Let’s spend it. I want flying lessons.'”

Betty agreed but with one condition — that she could also take lessons.

Months later Graham finally got his pilot’s license, but Betty did not.

“The instructor said she was a better pilot than I was,” Graham laughed. “But she never soloed because she didn’t want to fly alone.”

The Lowes later bought a Cessna 172, which came in handy for their next jobs at Calvary Baptist Day School in Savannah.

“The people at Westwood kept telling me how much they loved me, but, unfortunately, their affection was not reflected in my salary,” Lowe said. “A friend of mine in Savannah asked if I would be interested in the headmaster position at Calvary Day, and I took the job.”

The couple remained in Savannah for six years until “politics got involved,” and Albany beckoned once again. The couple returned home.

The Lowes weren’t out of work long, however, as Graham quickly became the headmaster at Southwest Georgia Academy in Damascus.

Finding a new home wasn’t easy.

“We needed a big place because I had to have some place where I could land the plane on the property,” Lowe said.

Graham Lowe remained at SGA until 2004 when “they told me they didn’t need me next year and I told them then they didn’t need me tomorrow, and I left.”

Former DWS headmaster W.T. Henry called Lowe and offered him a job as a French teacher and Betty a counselor’s position at the school.

It turned out to be the couple’s final stop.

“I never meant to work that long,” Betty said. “My goal was to quit after Allen graduated from college. But that’s not the way it worked.”

And what was the most valuable lesson she picked up along their journey?

“If you are the headmaster’s wife, you never go into the teacher’s lounge,” she said, laughing. “If you are a football coach’s wife, you never sit in the stands.”

What does Graham intend to do in retirement?

“I hope my wife will work out a schedule that lets me fly more,” he answered. “But I don’t think that will be a problem because she loves to fly.”