From Tiger to Lion: Mark Steven Dowd (1965-2022)
Mark S. Dowd on July 9, 2021. Macatawa, Michigan, celebrating Lori Dowd’s birthday. A grand time. He was in fine, fine form.
Several days ago I wrote about my brother Mark and New Year’s Eve.
Today the bell tolls on the anniversary of Mark’s passing. What a rough day! We all knew it was coming, but I thought he had as much as another week in him. Stunning that he went so quickly, but I remain grateful that he had no appreciable pain.
I might have waited for the anniversary of Mark’s memorial to post my eulogy, but today seems right. Below, remarks from the celebration of Mark Dowd’s life, an event timed for what would have been his 57th birthday: May 25th, 2021. The celebration was held at Shady Hollow Country Club where our father played golf and served as an early President (and where his memorial reception was held in 2016). A fitting place and a grand event. Lori cut a video to family photographs. I illustrated and with collaborator Scott Gericke designed the program. Importantly, each of Mark’s siblings spoke: Cindy, David, and me. So did son Maxwell Dowd, who did an impressive job with an impossible task.
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5/25/2022
Good afternoon. We’re so delighted and thankful that you could join us here today for a celebration of Mark Dowd’s fifty-seventh birthday.
I’m going to begin by telling a story about our father, who played a few rounds of golf here in his time and who I am certain is with us today.
We did a lot of long-distance driving as a family, most memorably to Florida, and plenty of stories built up over time from our traveling misadventures. But the best of these stories, by far, is connected to a stop for gasoline in the very early days of self-service stations. Our father, for all his capacities, lacked a mechanical aptitude. Hear me when I say I am understating the case.
Dad successfully initiated the fueling process, then to his credit checked the oil level by pulling out the dipstick, wiping it off, and reinserting to measure. He ascertained that he needed a quart, and went inside to buy it. When he returned to the car he was carrying one of those now-extinct cardboard cans with the metal top. He had also been given the metal spout used to puncture the can and pour the oil.
We siblings were witness to what transpired next from the back two rows of the green station wagon. The hood was up, leaving a crescent of negative space which perfectly framed our father’s hands as he labored, quite awkwardly, to insert the metal spout in the can. [Gestures, exasperated grunts] After a series of attempts, he had mortally wounded the can without actually transferring any of its contents into the engine. We feared what might happen next until the gas station attendant mercifully entered the frame to rescue us all from this unfolding atrocity. A second pair of hands took the dripping can from our father and deftly inserted the spout, with a satisfying thunk.
Never in our lives had we ever seen our father so defeated! But my God was it funny.
I’m telling you this story because in doing so, I can hear Mark roaring with laughter as it unfolds. We’ve recounted it a thousand times, all howling through it, taking turns finishing the story because the person telling it would be weeping with laughter. One of my very favorite things to do with Mark was to laugh with him, which I did, a lot.
We don’t know anyone who wasn’t stunned by Mark’s departure, because it happened so quickly. At the end of September, he seemed himself—vigorous, forward-thinking, excited about prospects. By mid-December he’d been ravaged by disease. Ten weeks. The night we got him to Canton Mercy and secured a diagnosis, I left him on the ward in the wee hours and returned to his condo, where I paced the floor and typed thoughts on my phone. I hadn’t looked at those notes until about a week ago. The first sentence I wrote: My brother is a lion.
I think it holds up. Proud. Ferocious. Stoic.
Mark was also insistent, sometimes to excess. About certain things he could be a complete control freak. Woe be unto the person who pushed the right button on the wrong remote, in the incorrect sequence, the among the four such devices it took to operate his Byzantine home entertainment system.
As Cindy noted, Mark struggled early. School was frustrating for him, college a poor fit. What he learned, he gained through experience.
Mark was tender and devoted and loyal in spades. He probably transported family members’ belongings from one place to another a hundred and fifty times. I think he might have personally handled every single container in Cindy’s house. Once he drove to St. Louis to help me move in a snowstorm.
Mark was a fastidious housekeeper. He held strong opinions. He had really good taste, and a well-developed sense of personal style. Panache, you could say. He was one of a kind.
Mark was born a tiger, but he became a lion.
To begin with, fatherhood changed him. His devotion to Max was unshakeable.
Now: Being one, having had one, I will say: Fathers can be complicated. Life is complicated. But love is not. Love is simple. Your Dad loved you, Max. He was desperately proud of you. And he will be there, in memory, when you need him.
What’s more, on those occasions when that’s not quite enough, we—this family—will be there in the flesh, whenever you call. You are stuck with us, buddy.
Mark grew into himself as a professional. From an uncertain start, he built a career in sales, then relocated to Stark County to be near Max. Slowly, doggedly, with an unmatched work ethic, he remade himself as a start up guy. He co-created Agile Network Builders and exited successfully, then moved on to InfoGPS. His discipline and focus were legendary, to the point of monomania. In recent years, Mark—who only briefly attended and did not graduate from college–was mentoring MBA students and collaborating with academic deans to build co-curricular academic programming at Walsh University. Incredible!
I would like to return to the wounded oil can and the vexatious TV remote. Mark and our father shared the same impatience. It would build and build, sometimes unseen, and then Kaboom! That volatility was a part of both of them. There were times when you just gave Mark a wide berth.
But over the past three or four years, Mark mellowed. He kept his edge, to be certain, but overall he was calmer, and more settled. He acquired a new patience. I think he came to understand his power, as well as its limits.
As we know Mark was dealt a tough hand. As he made his way through grim news and abrupt prognoses, he never complained. By contrast he was thankful, gracious, and funny to the last. As they say in gymnastics broadcasting, he nailed his dismount.
He went out like a lion, but remained a loyal tiger. In his honor, let’s have a sing of the Massillon Alma Mater. Afterward please join us for cocktails, toasts, and lots of laughter on the patio outside. A proper sendoff for Mark!
D.B. Dowd, Every Valley, 2021. Last year’s holiday card, made from Mark’s condo, and sent out just before the end of the year. The passage from Isaiah seemed correct somehow, and the lettering was soothing to build. I drew the crude bird on a piece of copier paper and shot it with an iPhone. All very provisional, which matched the time. As if on a raft somewhere, phenomena sloshing at the edges.
The tiger in question. Obie the Tiger, the Massillon High School Football mascot. Mark was a second generation Massillon Tiger (graduated 1983) after our father David (1947) and his two brothers Jack (1951) and Jim (1956) Our elder brother David (1975) was also a Tiger. O stands for orange and B for black; Obie became the mascot in 1926. I do not know whom to credit for the drawing, or the date of its composition.
D.B. Dowd, Jan’s Bouquet, illustration for memorial program, May 25, 2021. My mother-in-law Jan Lambright sent a floral arrangement to our home in St. Louis after we returned following Mark’s death. I didn’t know what to do with myself for days, so as the bouquet began to wither I pencilled and inked it.
Graphic design by Scott Gericke, my longtime collaborator. Photograph of Mark and Maxwell, also from that charmed weekend in Michigan.