Wayne Cameron Bowers, a construction company owner, fisherman, and a 24-year Sitka resident, died August 11 of a heart condition in Burien, Washington. He was 69.
No services are scheduled at this time.
Wayne was born June 22, 1957, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the son of Maryellen Severinghaus Bowers and Wayne Alexander Bowers, a physics professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
After a year at Oberlin College in Ohio, Wayne moved to Alaska, at first doing seasonal work in the forests of Prince of Wales Island, then after about a year moving to Ketchikan, where he did carpentry work. He married Sheree Clements in Ketchikan on May 11, 1985, and they soon moved to Craig, their home for the next 20 years. He formed Bowers Construction Co. there and continued its operation when they moved to Sitka in 2002.
Along with operating his company and doing some fishing, Wayne, like his parents, was a voracious reader. He also was a poet, a writer (including letters to the Sentinel editor), and had a wide range of interests, including in mathematics. He was a great family man, a wonderful father, his family said.
The day he died, Aug. 11, was the eve of a convergence of a total solar eclipse and a Perseid meteor shower. Before dawn six planets lined up, forming a distinct line across the sky, all but two planets visible to the naked eye; and after sunset Venus blazed in the western skies and a sliver of a new moon could be seen. Then the meteor shower became active, with "shooting stars" racing across the sky. "It was special," his family said.
Wayne was preceded in death by a sister, Margaret Ellen. He is survived by his wife of 41 years, Sheree, and sons Jason and Cameron, all of Sitka; his sister, Ruth Levy of Stockton, New Jersey, and a brother, John Bowers of Ithaca, New York.
