
“Getting by was not good enough” for the late Dr. Betty Ann Lowe, her sister, Dr. Margaret Bogle said.
Lowe was a pediatrician, diagnostician, educator and advocate for legislation she thought would address poverty, increase access to and improve the quality of health care.
Lowe worked at a private practice in Texarkana for 25 years, then went on to teach for the next 30 years, eventually serving as medical director for Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH) and associate dean of pediatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS).
Lowe went to medical school early and became the first woman to graduate at the top of her class from UAMS.
“Betty was one of those who really never had to study much,” Bogle said.
Bogle also said she found an essay among Lowe’s possessions that detailed her life’s journey. In it, her sister says, Lowe wrote that she never thought she would teach.
“But what she learned was that this was her philosophy, that in order to teach, the individuals who made the better teachers, in her view, that she had in medical school were those who had some experience in private practice,” Bogle said.
Lowe was educated by the public schools of rural Texas and Arkansas. She went to Boston’s Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School for residency training.
When Lowe started college, she wanted to be a commercial artist because she loved copying cartoons and had done illustrations for her high school annual. Bogle said her sister wrote about not hitting it off with her first art teacher and clashing with the modern style of the art department at the University of Arkansas.
Lowe also abandoned visions of being the next Hazel Walker, who was a prominent professional basketball player from Arkansas then. Lowe was only 5 feet, 4 inches tall.
Bogle said that didn’t stop her competitive sister from playing in high school and college and becoming an avid spectator. Lowe was good at basketball though; being left-handed gave her an advantage. She had an “unguardable” left-handed shot that rarely resulted in the ball missing the hoop.
Lowe enjoyed science and went the pre-med route instead when her commercial artist dream faded. Bogle said she was inspired to pursue a career working with children after she “hit it off” with a female pediatrician while in school.
Bogle said her sister also loved children and was very good with them, treating young patients like they were her family. Some of them were. Lowe didn’t have children of her own, but relatives called “Aunt Bett” whenever they had medical questions concerning her beloved nieces’ and nephews’ well-being.
“A lot of pediatricians always talked to the family. She talked to the kids … In some ways, she was still kind of a kid herself, I guess you’d say. They got along very well. She could talk to a kid about anything,” sports included, Bogle said.
She added that her sister didn’t care what others thought or about building her resume. Bogle said Lowe was honest, passionate and “down home; if she came in here, you’d feel like you’d known her forever.”
During Lowe’s tenure at ACH, she saw the facility expand from a 45-bed, two-patient-ward to a modern teaching hospital with more than 260 beds, 70 specialty clinics and a level three neonatal intensive care unit. Her priority was her patients.
She wanted ACH to be “kid-friendly” and not “second-rate,” Bogle said, noting that Lowe resisted the administration’s attempts to upgrade her office. Lowe insisted the money could be better spent on services and equipment for the kids.
Lowe also saw the first, state-of-the-art ambulatory care service, open-heart surgery, bone marrow transplant and heart transplant at ACH. An agreement was also signed between ACH and UAMS to establish a joint research institute while she was there.
Of her sister’s approach to teaching, Bogle said residents and interns would fight to get on her team because they knew they could learn a lot from her even though she was tough and called them out if they didn’t do their homework.
“Here was Betty’s idea: That there were a lot of smart kids in medical school but some of them didn’t push themselves at all,” Bogle said. “And she just couldn’t tolerate that. She thought, if you had the ability to perform at a high level, than you’d better perform at a high level.”
Lowe was also active on boards and committees for Camp Aldersgate, Easter Seals and Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, which she was a founder of.
She was a member of the International Women’s Forum of Arkansas, medical honor society Alpha Omega Alpha and a supporter of the Women’s Foundation of Arkansas.
Lowe was elected, after friends prompted her to run, as president of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). She was the first and only Arkansan, and second woman, to hold that national title.
Her many awards include the Father Joseph Blitz Award given by Arkansas Just Communities, Paul Harris Fellow Award given by Rotary International, 1980 Golden Apple Teaching Award given by UAMS, Arkansas Caduceus Club Distinguished Faculty Award, 1996 Milton Senn Award given by the AAP, 1982 President’s 75th Anniversary Award given by ACH and 2002 UAMS Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Achievements in Science and Medicine.
Lowe was the first to receive the Harvey and Bernice Jones Chair in Pediatrics in 1997. She was appointed as an adviser to President Bill Clinton’s Task Force for Health Care Reform. His daughter, Chelsea, was a patient of Lowe’s, Bogle said.
At Lowe’s retirement Clinton said, “To me, she just took care of kids better than anybody. And she inspired a whole new generation of doctors to do the same. Betty, you have lived your life well in the most noble way possible — pouring yourself out for others.”
In 1999, former students and patients established the Betty Ann Lowe, M.D. Distinguished Chair in Pediatric Education.
But there was also a “mischievous” and “adventurous” side to this high achiever, Bogle said.
She recalled riding to work in her sister’s car when Lowe calmly stated that the brakes on her Studebaker weren’t working. That “didn’t faze her one bit” and Lowe simply coasted up to a loading dock to drop Bogle off.
Another time, she pulled a prank on a girl who had “gotten under her skin.” Lowe tied the girl’s long braid to a seat on the school bus.
Another time, Bogle said, Lowe had two friends who were accompanying her on a fishing trip stop by her father’s place to pick potatoes as he had asked.
Lowe had two sisters and a brother. Their mother was a teacher; and their father was an administrator.
Bogle said her parents pushed their children to do better in school than everyone else.
Lowe lived up to their expectations by graduating as valedictorian from Fourche Valley High School in Briggsville.
Now Lowe’s estate is providing, as she directed, continuing support for the Division of Pediatric Rheumatology at ACH and a chair that was established for a board-certified pediatric rheumatologist in 2013.
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