Obituary: Stephen (Jack) Cowen

Born on November 11, 1921 and passed away on Sunday morning at 91 years of age. Once again America suffers the lost of another member of the Greatest Generation, our father. He was delivered into the world on the floor of a rural rustic cabin in Arch, Oklahoma by his mother and with the help of his preschool aged sisters. After his parents separated, his older brothers moved to California. Dad and his three sisters were raised by their wonderful great aunts, Molly and Able who where both in their seventies at the time. They were more than any others responsible for making him into a man of great character and charm.During the Dust Bowl era, Dad's brother, Artois, came back to Oklahoma to collect his little brother. Artois taught him how to jump box cars on freight trains and together they set out on a journey back to California. At the age 14 and with nothing but the clothes on his back and seven dollars in his pocket, he jumped box cars when he could and much to the begrudgement of his brother walked many miles when he missed one. After a week of cold and often hunger he arrived in California in his new role in life which he described as "the low man on the totem pole"After years of making a life in California, serving on the battleship Mississippi in World War II (1943-1945) and fathering seven children he and wife Cleo Juanita Cowen moved their family to Carson City, Nevada in 1964. There he partnered with our mother's youngest brother, Ray May, at the Richfield station on the corner of Hwy 50 and 395. He later would start Cowen's Tire and Automotive and a few years afterward that take Bob May and Lloyd Dickerson as his partners to form Carson Tire on Stewart Street. After he and his partners sold the business in the late seventies he continued to work until he retired at 65.Dad has lived in Carson City in the same house on Rawhide Way until the day before he passed: tanning in the sun on his back patio, gardening, dancing, singing, playing the guitar and all the while surrounding himself in pictures and memorabilia of our mother and current and past friends and family. He is survived by his three sons, Stephen, Gregory and Ronald and two daughters, Jackie Cheney and Sharon Stutsman. He has two grandchildren, Dale Lamborn and Tara Ramirez, four great grandsons (Branden & Travis Lamborn, Aaron & Cruz Ramirez) and one great-great grandson, Tatum Lamborn. He will be dearly missed by all that knew him. He was our hero.Funeral services will be held Thursday Feb. 14, 2013 at 9:30AM at Fitzhenry’s Funeral Home. Burial to follow with Military Honors at Lone Mountain Cemetery.