Roger Stanley Dowiat

Roger Stanley Dowiat, age 67, passed away unexpectedly Wednesday after spending a wonderful day with family and friends. Roger grew up in Mentone, attending Moon Lake Elementary and Valley Head High School – there he met a cute younger student, Judy Kay Young, the sister of his best buddy. He liked squirrel and deer hunting with a favorite uncle, Emerson. He liked reading the signs of nature and signs of the sky at night. He and Judy’s brother enlisted in the Navy together when Roger was just 17 years old. He saw Italy and Greece in his tour of the Mediterranean, saying years later he couldn’t believe his foolish young self had seen the world in three years but never taken a single photo. His ship was sent to the Cuban Missile Crisis, with Roger getting a first-hand sight of the war ships loaded with Russian missiles, dangerously close to America. Returning home from service, he married Judy and had two children. Roger became a career machinist, working in the Fort Payne area until retirement from the Sara Lee Bakery in 2002. Roger was a life-long learner. His lunch breaks at blue-collar jobs would be spent hunched over a correspondence course learning Hebrew, a textbook on geology, or the latest issue of “Sky and Telescope” magazine. Roger loved retirement because it allowed him the proper amount of time for all his many hobbies – a life-long fascination with trains, collecting fossils (petrified dinosaur eggs, prehistoric shark teeth, and trilobites, which were treasures gathered mostly through activity in the Fort Payne Gem and Mineral Club) and staying up all night with his telescope and a classical radio station to study the heavens. In retirement he had time to join the Atlanta Astronomy Club and host “star parties” in Mentone on the old family land. Like-minded amateur astronomers would arrive from all over the region with tents and telescopes and compare knowledge of Jupiter, Mars, and the Milky Way. And while a quick exit from this world would have been his preference, he would have chosen to be taken out by a renegade meteor. Wife Judy’s first and enduring impression of Roger was his pretty brown eyes, with a sparkle of mischief that lasted across the years. On Christmas morning, Judy was able to open the last gift and sweet card from Roger, hidden by him until Christmas. Son Stan loved spending time out on the land with his father, where they would work cutting trails, sharing theories on science and current events – Dad was curious about every subject. Daughter Sharon loved going to bookstores with her dad, both excited by the brand new ideas and revelations hidden inside, waiting to be found. She treasures memories from a trip together to the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley, years afterward still trying to comprehend the magnitude, time and scale of creating such a place. He was one of a kind, and is going to be deeply missed. Roger is survived by his wife of 45 years Judy Young Dowiat, mother Eugenia Dowiat, sister Gwen Erikson, son Stan Dowiat, daughter Sharon Doviet and son-in-law Chris Russell, grandchildren Jade and Kirby Dowiat, step grand-children Jackson and Nathan Russell, and grand-nephew Bleu Stone. In lieu of flowers, friends can make donations to the Moon Lake Community Library in Mentone... or simply spend a few moments in a thoughtful gaze at the nighttime sky.

Roger Stanley Dowiat

October 30, 1942 - December 23, 2009