Beekeeper, pilot kept going long after diagnosis
Daniel (Danny) Bowers of Cambridge Born: Sept. 2, 1946, in Kirkland Lake Died: Nov. 17, 2017, of cancer
It was a blistering July day in 2013 when Danny Bowers answered his apartment door, tall, robust and grinning like a man who has much to live for despite his doctor’s disturbing prognosis that cancer would end his life. Actually the doctor had said that two years earlier and suggested Danny had perhaps six months.
But there he was, happy to share what he assumed would be his final thoughts with a reporter.
No one knew just how unpredictable life can be than the former pilot, beekeeper and businessman, and it was this attitude that kept Danny alive for six years after his initial terminal diagnosis in 2011.
Life had been trying to knock Danny down for years but he always made a miraculous recovery.
“To me, when I get a problem, I break it down: what can I do?” said Danny, a practical man who spent little time worrying about the future. After a serious accident in 2000 where he fell through floor boards in a construction site and hit concrete, Danny suffered broken bones and a cracked skull, injuries that lead to a pulmonary embolism that nearly killed him. That was nothing compared to what was coming.
Danny suffered through bouts with cancer, toxic shock syndrome, mini strokes and he had a hereditary fatty liver disease.
“I’ve been through things that should have killed me,” he said, remembering how he found out about his first major cancer prognosis. “Five years ago (2008) I had some really bad indigestion; they sent me for some tests.”
The diagnoses came from an alert radiologist who noticed something aside from his chronic indigestion: kidney cancer. More tests, more bad news.
“It had to be removed immediately,” he said, “He (doctor) found four lung lesions, 12 lesions in the liver, a tumour in the appendix and kidney.
“It looked like it had metastasized, I’m finished.”
Danny, ever hopeful, asked the doctor about options and was told with or without surgery life expectancy was perhaps six months. In his usual optimistic way, Danny chose surgery, hoping it would give him a few months. A few years seemed impossible, but he made it possible.
Danny came from a family with a history of illness. Both parents died of cancer and his two sisters have survived cancer. He also lost his daughter, artist Sherri Lee Bowers, in 2009 to multiple organ failure and it was shortly after her death that he faced that first major bout with cancer. The worst, however, would come in Sept. 2011.
Danny had a growth in his bile duct and pancreatic cancer.
“I was told two to six months,” he said. “I was told there was nothing they could do.”
For four decades, Danny and his wife Dale lived their dream as hobby farmers north of Campbellville where he raised bees while running a computer systems consulting firm. He gave the business up after learning his skills improving a company’s efficiencies usually led to layoffs.
“He didn’t like people getting fired,” said Dale.
Her husband next went into sales and marketing, jobs that suited Danny’s people-loving personality. Then came that terminal diagnoses in 2011.
“I was faced with a decision,” he said. The man who always looked forward suddenly wondered if he’d live until Thanksgiving or Christmas. Those dates
became lifelines.
“People don’t give up until after a major event,” he said. “I’m going to plan a hundred things. A year wasn’t unreasonable.”
Danny’s main concern was selling the farm, moving to Cambridge and starting on a bucket list with travel a priority. In September 2013, the couple left on an Alaskan cruise, their last major trip though there were several shorter vacations.
“I purposely put on 60 pounds, maybe 80, I thought the weight would extend my life,” he said. “I ate every comfort food: Kraft dinner, sushi.”
Accepting that the end was coming, Danny decided to hold his own funeral in June 2012.
“I thought, ‘if I’m going to pay for it, I’m going to go to it,’” Danny said. “It would be all my friends and I thought if I invite 20, I’d get 12.”
Eighty turned up and though the numbers were daunting Danny knew “we’d only have to do it once.”
Everyone thought they were saying goodbye but a year later, Danny was still here. Even the funeral director asked “how are you doing this?” he recalled.
Danny’s big, bold sense of humour helped him deal with such questions. He had exceeded everyone’s expectations, except his own. Extending his life was his plan and he succeeded.
Danny had been born the eldest of three to parents who ran a grocery store in Dobie where they also provided taxi service and moose butchering. Danny went to high school in nearby Kirkland Lake where he nourished a big dream by joining air cadets.
“I just wanted to fly,” he recalled. At 16, Danny moved south seeking jobs at airports.
In his memoir Danny wrote how he became a “hangar rat” at Toronto Island airport. “I hung around the hangar waiting for people who wanted to fly somewhere,” he wrote.
Danny earned his commercial pilot licence with designations to perform night flying and fly seaplanes. Air Canada was interested in hiring this kid from the north, but first they wanted him to get a degree. In his second year at Western University, Danny’s eyesight weakened and he was suddenly unqualified to become a pilot.
He met his future wife, Dale, at Western, while standing in line at a bursar’s office. The charmer offered to take her flying. They married in 1968 and had two children, Sheri Lee and Robert.
After graduating in computer science, Danny started a long and varied career at IBM.
“I had 14 jobs in 13 years at IBM,” he said. “IBM stands for ‘I’ve Been Moved.’” When the company decided to transfer him to the U.S., Danny had enough and quit.
“I didn’t want to leave my farm,” he said. “I left IBM and started beekeeping. I loved beekeeping.”
Danny was first exposed to beekeeping years earlier, when a neighbour hired a professional to get rid of a hive.
“I watched the beekeeper and got interested, I was watching and thought ‘that’s absolutely amazing,’” he recalled. Having his own farm, his own hives was a dream come true at least until 2011 when the bad news on his health meant he had to rethink what remained of his life.
In his parting words to the reporter, Danny grew introspective.
“I don’t understand why I’m still here,” he said, adding, “I enjoy living so much.”