April 2019—Harold E. Bowman, MD, a member of the CAP Board of Governors from 1979 to 1985, died on Feb. 1 at age 93.
Dr. Bowman retired in 1994 as director of laboratories at St. Lawrence Hospital, now Sparrow Hospital, in Lansing, Mich., and as associate chair, Department of Pathology, Michigan State University College of Human Medicine.
Dr. Bowman was a member of the CAP Foundation Board of Directors and treasurer and president of the CAP Foundation from 1980 to 1990. He was also chair of the Council on Education and of the Commission on Anatomic Pathology.
Dr. Bowman
“He was a very nice gentleman who was committed to the foundation,” says Paul Bachner, MD, who joined the CAP Foundation Board of Directors when Dr. Bowman was president. “He was key in developing some of their programs.”
“I remember that he went out of his way to acclimate me to the foundation board, despite the fact that we didn’t always agree on certain things,” says Dr. Bachner, a professor and immediate past chairman of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Kentucky, where he served as director of laboratories from 1993 to 2015. “He was always very collegial.”
Joseph Leverone, MD, who also served with Dr. Bowman on the CAP Foundation Board of Directors, remembers him as someone who “had a ready smile and was very concerned about the future of the CAP, especially in terms of the younger pathologists.” Dr. Leverone is medical director of laboratory services, HealthEast Care System in St. Paul, Minn., and president of Central Regional Pathology Laboratories, Maplewood, Minn.
“At that time there wasn’t the organizational concern for younger pathologists that there is today, so he was a little ahead of his day in that regard. We have the New in Practice Committee now,” Dr. Leverone says. While Dr. Bowman was not directly involved in creating the New in Practice Committee, he was devoted to promoting organizational education for residents and newly practicing pathologists. “He kept the subject in front of us all the time.”
One of Dr. Bowman’s most significant initiatives during his term on the foundation board was organizing a series of educational conferences on strategic, mission-related topics on pathology and medicine, Dr. Bachner says. Between 1980 and 1989, the foundation held five conferences, with titles such as “The Autopsy: Revitalizing the Ultimate Medical Consultation” and “Pathology in a World of Changing Technology.” Summaries of each conference appeared in CAP publications.
“He was a community-oriented person and a pillar of whatever he be-longed to—the CAP, his community, his practice, his hospital,” Dr. Leverone says. “He was forward-looking and didn’t rest on the status quo.”
“He was a very hale and hearty fellow, the kind of individual you enjoyed spending an evening with,” he adds.
Dr. Bowman, of Muskegon, Mich., is survived by two sons, a daughter, 10 grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. His wife, Sally, preceded him in death in 2005.
—Amy Carpenter Aquino