Page 24 - Scene Magazine 41-02 February 2016
P. 24

SCENE’s Battle Creek History Section
Note: Berenice Bryant Lowe is universally recognized as one of Battle Creek’s most important historians and author of Tales of Battle Creek. In this article her daughter, Sharon Lowe Davis, tells the little-known story of her mother’s life before she started researching and writing about local history, beginning with her career as the “child elocutionist” at age eight.
A Battle Creek ’
Historian s
EarlyYears
BY SHARON LOWE DAVIS
The next year Berenice returned to Michigan and taught English at Battle Creek Central High School from 1919 to 1921. In addition to her classroom duties teaching English, Public Speaking and Dramatics, Miss Jones was the popular Faculty Advisor for the Junior Pageant and Senior Play.
In 1921 Berenice married Stan Lowe, who she had first dated at during her first summer at Mackinaw Island. They moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, where Stan was a chemical engineer with Kimberly Clark. They returned to Ann Arbor
in 1924 so Stan could attend medical school. Berenice completed her master’s degree and also earned money as a teacher’s assistant.
In 1929, after graduating from medical school and completing his residency in Grand Rapids Dr. Stanley Lowe opened a medical practice in Battle Creek.
While she was raising her family, Berenice kept active as an author and educator. In 1937 she wrote a book, Hello Michigan, which became a popular textbook for fourth graders around the state. Her New York publisher wanted her to write a “Hello” book for each of the other 47 states. With her husband, she debated the impact this large undertaking would have on her family, including daughter, Marjorie, age 15 and son, Mickey, age eight. The following June their daughter, Sharon, was born, The “Hello” project was soon forgotten.
Berenice spent many hours each day in her beautiful garden and, late into the night, writing stories. She made copies of all her stories, using carbon paper. When she submitted a story to a magazine she wrote down the date it was sent and the date she received the rejection letter. She knew many people at the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and when executives changed positions the secretaries gave her the outdated stationary and she used it all. All her carbon copy stories are done on the back of Foundation letterhead.
Berenice wrote a children’s story called “Buppy and the Hiccups,” which was very dear to the family. Buppy was a bear cub and a wolf scares away his hiccups. “Buppy” was rejected in a publisher’s writing contest, but a couple of years later the publisher came out with a book about a lion with the hiccups, and the ending was the same as Berenice’s story.
After World War II she was very active in the Battle Creek Civic Theater. She always said dramatics was her first love, perhaps dating back to her early years as an elocutionist.
By 1950 her two oldest children were grown and the youngest somewhat independent, so Berenice was looking for a new interest. One day she stood looking out her picture window over-looking Goguac Lake, noticing the abandoned pilings and brick steps down to the lake dated 1881. She wondered about the history of the lake ... AND A BATTLE CREEK HISTORIAN WAS BORN!
For a more detailed discussion, and more pictures, of Berenice Bryant’s childhood and her career as an historian, read her autobiographical articles, “Child Elocutionist” and “Attic Archeologist” on the Heritage Battle Creek website, www.heritagebattlecreek.org/berenicebrynatlowe.
Berenice Bryant Lowe was born in Flint in 1896. The name on her birth certificate is Bernice Louise Jones. She had an older brother, LaVern. Bernice entered kindergarten in December 1902 and in January she was moved to the first grade.
In 1904 the family was told to move west because
the fumes from the car factories in Flint were making her mother Jenny sick. They moved to Holland, Michigan, where her dad Ralston bought a flower shop and flower farm. He had always wanted to be a florist and having the farm only added to his happiness.
At the age of eight Bernice took elocution lessons from
a teacher who lived nearby. Soon Bernice was providing
the entertainment for ladies clubs, as well as for church
and school groups. She put on short skits, and recited
poems, short stories and scenes from Shakespeare. Bernice
charged 50 cents for each program. Fifteen cents paid for the trolley rise and the remaining 35 cents went in her savings account.
Known as “Western Michigan’s Child Elocutionist,” Bernice gave these programs until she was 14 years old.
In the school year 1905-06 Bernice completed both the fourth and fifth grades. Quoting Bernice, “Because my mother hated pronunciation of my first name – ‘Burn us’ for Bernice – in school I adopted the Greek or Biblical spelling: Berenice, which places the accent on the second syllable, as ‘Bernees’.”
Berenice graduated from Holland High School and attended Hope College.
She and a friend saw an ad for waitresses needed on Mackinaw Island. For the summer of 1916 the two ladies went to the Island, only to discover that they had been hired to work in a very dirty, dumpy short-order restaurants mostly used by locals. At church the first Sunday they were there, the girls met the owner of a lovely hotel by the water, Iroquois-on-the-Beach. He offered them jobs at his upscale restaurant and the girls enjoyed working there.
The next summer Berenice returned alone and dated Stan Lowe, who was working on the dock of the Grand Hotel. That fall she transferred to the University of Michigan for her senior year.
Berenice graduated in 1918 and took a job as the ‘advance man’ for the Chautauqua, groups of lecturers, musicians and speakers that traveled from town to town giving plays and entertainments for the locals. She traveled one day ahead of the show making arrangements for locations, tents, sleeping quarters, and food for the troopers.
Her mother was very upset when Berenice took this job and made her daughter write detailed letters when arriving in each town so she would know Berenice was safe.
During the summer the Chautauqua circuit went through northern Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and into the New England states. In Keene, New Hampshire, Berenice met the superintendent of schools and he offered her a job teaching a high school English class, ‘Plays and Games.’ She accepted this position for the 1918-1920 school year.
24 SCENE 4102 I SENIORS & HISTORY ISSUE


































































































   22   23   24   25   26