Respected Boat Builder Killed in Car Accident

Tilghman Resident and Sister Die in Crash

Maynard W. Lowery, shown in 1999. (By Frank Johnston -- The Washington Post)

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By Martin Weil

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 20, 2008; Page B03

A renowned 88-year-old boat builder was killed Monday along with his 87-year-old sister in a collision with a Maryland State Police patrol car on the Eastern Shore, authorities said.

Maynard W. Lowery and his sister, Alma Lowery, both of Tilghman, Md., were killed in St. Michaels when their car drove into the path of a trooper heading to the scene of a crash, state police said.

Lowery was described in The Washington Post in 1984 as "the last builder of traditional wooden Chesapeake Bay-style yachts and workboats" on Tilghman, an island town where the water was both livelihood and recreation.

A boat builder for about 60 years, Maynard Lowery "built anything from fancy motor yachts to local commercial boats," his son Doug said last night.

At a boatyard of his own, he worked from the designs of others, and from those he drew up.

Boats he built were "spread out all up and down the East Coast," the son said.

He was known for Cape Cod catboats, a kind of sailboat. One of his painstakingly constructed craft was sold to former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the son said.

The 1984 Post story described Lowery, his son and his brother in a drafty tin shed at water's edge, shaping logs with hand tools, to build "in the time-honored way" a 46-foot workboat for a waterman on Kent Island.

State police gave this account of the crash: Trooper 1st Class Philip W. Willoughby, 28, of the Easton Barracks had just gone on duty shortly before 3 p.m. when he heard a report of a crash involving an injury and an overturned vehicle.

He headed east on Route 33 toward the crash, with his emergency lights and siren on, according to witnesses.

Driving a 1987 four-door Toyota, Maynard Lowry, according to preliminary investigation, pulled out of a shopping center parking lot into the trooper's path. His car was hit on the driver's side.

Maynard Lowery died at the scene. His sister died at a hospital. The trooper was treated at a hospital and released.

Last winter, the son said, he and his father built a catboat to order. It was the fifth time the father had said a boat he was working on would be his last. "As it turned out," the son said, that one was.