DANIEL STOWE | 1913 -- 2006 Garden's benefactor, ex-textile magnate dies
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Daniel Stowe, philanthropist, member of a pioneering North Carolina
textile family and creator of an expansive botanical garden along Lake
Wylie in southeast Gaston County, died Monday at 93.
He had been in declining health since suffering a stroke in 2002.
Stowe helped build one of the state's largest and most successful
companies, which at one time employed 5,000 people. Stowe Mills, which
later became Pharr Yarns Inc., played an integral part in Gaston
County's role as a national textile center.
Stowe stepped in to save endangered historic buildings that were later
recycled for such uses as a county museum. And he donated the land and
provided financial help to build Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden, which
has grown into a major regional tourist draw.
As he focused on big projects, he never lost sight of the average
person.
"He was one of the finest fellows I ever had any dealings with," said
former employee Robert Moss, 79, of McAdenville. "He cared about
people."
In 1989, when Moss' home was heavily damaged by Hurricane Hugo, Stowe
asked him if he needed any financial help. Moss declined, but was
impressed that his boss "was willing to help."
"The people who worked for him loved him," Moss said Monday evening.
"They thought the world of him."
The botanical garden released this statement Monday: "Daniel Stowe has
honored our community through development of the Daniel Stowe Botanical
Garden. As a lifelong nature enthusiast, the garden he envisioned will
provide life-times of learning and enjoyment for the families of our
community. The garden is planning a public celebration honoring Mr.
Stowe's life. Now is a time for his family and close friends to
remember and mourn the loss of this important community leader."
Co-founder of a textile company that brought new life to the town of
McAdenville during the Depression, Stowe was a private man who quietly
spent his money on such pursuits as farming, an antique collection and
helping the community where he spent most of his life.
A dapper dresser and world traveler who collected such things as
vintage cars and old National Geographics, Stowe lived in a
9,000-square-foot French country home overlooking the meeting point of
the South Fork and Catawba rivers.
The eccentric
Born between the two rivers, Stowe was the youngest of three children
of the legendary R.L. Stowe Sr., who started Belmont's first mill in
1901 and shaped the company into a textile empire. Daniel Stowe's
siblings included a sister, Lillian Rhyne Stowe, who died before his
birth, and a brother and sister.To some, Daniel Stowe seemed like a
reclusive mill magnate more interested in his antiques and peacocks
roaming his 1,200-acre Seven Oaks Farm than the world beyond its
wrought-iron gates.
But people who knew Stowe said that behind his private nature and
natural shyness was a caring person with a deep sense of community and
its history.
"Dan was genuine, down-to-earth and had an extraordinary amount of
vision, not only for Gaston County, but both the Carolinas," said
Gaston textile historian Robert Ragan of Charlotte. "His historical and
charitable interests he did very quietly and behind the scenes."
Stowe was a pack rat who kept every issue of National Geographic, Life
and Reader's Digest he'd gotten in the mail since he was in his 20s. He
had hundreds of arrowheads and rocks and a black 1949 Cadillac sedan
his mother used when she was alive.
Ragan said people may have considered Stowe eccentric, but "most
visionaries are."
"They do things differently. They have ideas. And they get things
done," Ragan said. "Dan had the means. A lot of people have the means,
but they don't get around to doing anything. Dan did something."
Sen. David Hoyle, D-Gaston, agreed.
"He made a lot of money, but he gave it back," Hoyle said. "The
botanical garden will mean mega-dollars for Gaston. It was a passion
and a dream that became a reality."
Hoyle called Stowe a "great philantrophist" who loved the environment
and the arts.
"I'm glad we had Dan Stowe as a citizen," he said. "We are a lot better
off because of him."
Stowe's father and brother, Robert, became powerful in city and county
politics. Occasionally, they were attacked by opponents who said they
promoted business interests at the expense of the area's residents.
But Daniel Stowe stayed away from the political limelight. He never ran
for political office. He lived quietly in Belmont and had few personal
friends.
The mill owner
Stowe was born May 23, 1913, and was close to his older brother,
Robert, and sister, Catherine.
In his 2000 memoir, "By the Waters of the South Fork," Stowe recalled
that "even after I grew up my family remained my anchor -- the group in
which I could always be myself, whether enjoying a good belly laugh or
airing my grievances. They were always there for me."
As a young man, Stowe worked afternoons and summers in the family's
Chronicle Mill preparing for a move into management. He graduated from
Belmont Abbey Junior College in 1932. At Davidson College, he majored
in psychology instead of business administration.
In a 1991 interview with the Observer, Stowe said: "That probably
helped me more than anything I could have studied. Psychology is about
people and so is the textile business."
Stowe graduated from Davidson in 1935 and for two years worked in a
mill managed by his father and brother.
In 1939, he got the chance to do something on his own.
Stowe and his brother-in-law, William Pharr, heard that the idled
McAden Mills and village of McAdenville were for sale.
Shut down during the Depression, the old mills had rusting secondhand
mill equipment, leaky roofs and sagging floors.
But Pharr and Daniel Stowe saw potential.
They talked the elder Stowe into helping them buy the textile plants.
Stowe Sr. became president of the newly formed Stowe Mills Inc. Pharr
was vice president and treasurer, and Daniel Stowe was secretary and
assistant treasurer.
Robert Ragan called it a "bold and visionary" move.
"Against all advice, they took over the rundown mills and village and
turned it into a new venture," Ragan said.
During World War II, Stowe joined the Navy, but he returned to the
McAdenville textile business in 1945 just before the great post-war
homebuilding boom.
Ragan said Stowe and Pharr recognized the future of nylon carpet yarns
and formed a new synthetic yarns subsidiary, Pharr Yarns Inc., to meet
the expected demand.
The business thrived. And by the 1980s, it had 12 plants and 5,000
employees in the Carolinas, Georgia and Europe.
Stowe later became president of the company. He also was an officer and
director in the family's combed yarn business, R.L. Stowe Mills of
Belmont.
"I'm a mill man, Dan Stowe's a mill man, and I rate him No. 1," said
Duke Kimbrell, chairman of Gastonia's Parkdale Mills Inc. "Daniel Stowe
was a polite Southern gentleman who got along with his fellow man --
from a mill hand and garbage collector to a billionaire."
The philanthropist
Stowe had a lifelong interest in the history of the region. In 1976, a
Gaston County museum opened in the old county courthouse, but
supporters wanted to move it into the 1852 Hoffman Hotel building in
Dallas.After Gaston voters failed to pass a 1980 bond referendum to
restore the old hotel for a permanent county museum, Stowe urged
supporters not to give up on the project.
"He said, `Keep trying. We'll figure out something else,' '' recalled
Lucy Penegar, chair of the Gaston County Historic Preservation
Commission. "And we did. We started raising money, and he gave us a
bunch of it, $50,000. That was a significant contribution to moving
into the hotel."
In 1998, when the owners of Gastonia's historic First Baptist Church on
Franklin Boulevard had plans to demolish it, Stowe's foundation bought
the building. St. Stephens AME Zion Church, a historically black
congregation that worshipped at another location, bought the building
and leased space to the United Arts Council of Gaston County. The
groups use the building, now called Unity Place, for plays weddings and
church services.
"Dan Stowe gave unselfishly to his community," Penegar said. "He was a
wonderful person. Without him, we wouldn't have Unity Place, the county
museum or the botanical garden."
Important as the textile business and history were to Stowe, so was his
love for the land between the South Fork and Catawba rivers.
In 1941, before he enlisted in the Navy, he'd begun to buy land that
would evolve into Seven Oaks Farm. Years later, part of the property
would form the botanical garden.
When Stowe returned from the war, he got advice from experts with the
federal Soil and Water Conservation on the best way to keep soil on his
waterfront property from washing into the Catawba River.
Stowe had the fields terraced and seeded them in fescue grass. He
raised beef cattle for a while, later switched to dairy cattle and then
back to beef.
Within 16 years, Stowe had accumulated 1,122 acres.
The botanical garden
In the late 1980s, Stowe sold his half-interest in Stowe-Pharr Mills to
family members and retired to his farm, where his French-style home had
been completed in 1971.
In August 1983, Stowe married the former Alene Nobles of Tabor City.
Stowe had resisted offers from developers to buy the farm and build a
resort community there. He told an Observer reporter in 1991 that he
wanted the farm kept intact so "it can be preserved as a beautiful
piece of land and, at the same time, people can enjoy it into the next
century."
That same year, on his 78th birthday, Stowe announced that he and his
wife were donating $14 million and another $13.8 million in land to
begin a botanical garden. It was the largest single donation of land
and money for public benefit in Gaston County history.
At the time, N.C. Gov. Jim Martin called the garden "a great gift to
our state that will be enjoyed by citizens from across the Carolinas."
Inspired by such gardens as Longwood Gardens near Wilmington, Del., the
Chicago Botanic Garden and Calloway Gardens in Pine Mountain, Ga.,
Stowe Botanical Garden has become one of Gaston's top tourist
attractions with about 60,000 visitors annually.
Gaston County Manager Jan Winters said that as the garden continues to
develop, the potential benefits to the county and region are even
greater.
"The vision they have there is absolutely incredible," he said. "It
will be a significantly larger draw."
Despite his privileged background and wealth, Stowe considered himself
a gentleman farmer.
Robert Ragan recalled seeing Stowe pulling out of a Myrtle Beach
nursery behind the wheel of a pickup full of plants.
"He loved flowers, the soil and fertilizing his plants," Ragan said.
"He loved beautiful things."
In "By the Waters of the South Fork," Stowe wrote that while he
appreciated his father's business sense and passion for textiles, "land
and its preservation always appealed to me more. I would have loved
growing up on a farm. Something deep inside of me responded to all
those rolling acres."
Funeral arrangements are incomplete. Visitation will be from 5 until 7
p.m. Wednesday at the garden. According to family members, Stowe will
be buried in the family mausoleum at Belmont's Greenwood Cemetery.
Daniel Stowe
Daniel Stowe was born May 23, 1913, the youngest child of Robert Lee
Stowe and Nellie Lee Rhyne Stowe. Some key points in Stowe's life:
1932: Graduated from Belmont Abbey College.
1935: Graduated from Davidson College.
1939: Entered partnership to form Stowe Mills in McAdenville.
1942: Enlisted in Navy.
1950: Pharr Yarns Inc. formed.
1983: Married Alene Nobles.
1991: Donated land and money for botanical garden.