May 24, 2008


He gave his gun, then gave his life: Tallahassee veteran remembers fellow Marine

By Gerald Ensley
DEMOCRAT SENIOR WRITER

Calvin Shipman conducts his own Memorial Day observance each year at Old City Cemetery. The former Marine visits the grave of another former Marine: Lt. Francis Lowry.

The two met briefly during World War II but were linked forever by this coincidence: Lowry lent Shipman his rifle just hours before Lowry was killed at Iwo Jima. Twenty years later, Shipman stumbled upon Lowry's grave and realized he'd been aided by a fellow Tallahasseean.

"It's a small world," said Shipman, 84. "That's a cliche, but it's true."

Shipman, 84, is a retired trucking executive and Perry native who moved to Tallahassee in 1948. Father of two adult children and a widower since 1998, he lives in an immaculately kept home in the Parkside neighborhood.

Lowry, born a month before Shipman, was 21 when he died. He was a member of an old Tallahassee family: His father was Dexter Lowry, a president of Capital City Bank and a Tallahassee mayor.

Iwo Jima was one of World War II's bloodiest battles. More than 6,800 U.S. soldiers died in the 35-day siege of the key Japanese stronghold.

Shipman was a Marine private and radio operator with the 4th Marine Division; Lowry was a communications lieutenant with the same division, though in a different company. They'd never met before Feb. 19, 1945, when thousands of Marines disembarked from a Navy carrier into smaller boats for the landing on Iwo Jima. Shipman made a trip to the boat to load radio equipment and returned to find his rifle gone.

"Some guys got antsy and wanted three or four guns. I used proper Marine language for a while," Shipman said with a smile.

The outburst drew Lowry, who gave Shipman his rifle, explaining he still had a handgun. Then they went their separate ways.

As communications Marines, these men didn't rely on a rifle for defense; their main concern was artillery shells raining down on the foxholes where they sent and received information. But as one of only two Marines in his unit certified as an "expert" marksman, Shipman was expected to be armed.

"I didn't fire (the rifle) once; didn't need to," he said. "But it was a comfort to have."

Shipman survived Iwo Jima, and two months later the war ended. He turned in the rifle and mustered out of the Marines in December 1945. By then, he had seen Lowry's name on a casualty list.

"But I did not think any more about it," he said.

He came back to Perry, got married and moved to Tallahassee. In 1966, his son Tom, then 11, became interested in local history, and the two of them visited the Old City Cemetery.

Strolling around, Shipman noticed the Marines' globe-and-anchor emblem on a gravestone — inscribed with "Lt. Francis William Lowry" and a death date of Feb. 19, 1945. A call to a buddy confirmed Lowry was killed the first night on Iwo Jima.

Shipman said the first time he saw the gravestone, he lost sense of time: "I don't want to press the deja vu angle too much, but it seemed like (Iwo Jima) was starting all over again."

At Florida High, Lowry was a star athlete and student. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Washington and Lee University in three years and joined the Marines. Tall and handsome, he was the youngest of three children, which made him especially close to his mother, Letitia.

Though he was buried at Iwo Jima, his mother insisted the Marines return his body to Tallahassee. He was buried in Old City Cemetery in September 1947; his parents are buried beside him.

"He was his mother's pride and joy," said Sarah Shaw, wife of local businessman Frank Shaw Jr., Lowry's nephew. His death "just broke her heart."

For 40 years, Shipman made his annual pilgrimage to the cemetery but rarely discussed his connection with Lowry. Last August, a childhood friend of Lowry's wrote to a Marine veterans magazine seeking more information about his death. That prompted an exchange of letters and phone calls among Shipman, former Marines and Lowry's family and childhood friends.

But nothing explains how two men from the same corner of Florida crossed paths halfway around the world at a tumultuous moment in both lives.

Ellie