DAR honors local historian Beverly Rowe
If you ask Dr. Beverly Rowe, a longtime downtown Texarkana advocate and tireless historian of all things Texarkana, about an award she just received from the Daughters of the American Revolution, she’ll say it’s as much Texarkana’s award as hers.
Rowe’s the Texarkana College history professor who’s written books about Texarkana’s past and countless articles detailing the history of downtown buildings, who renovated a downtown property for her and her husband to call home and who built two museums that celebrate Texarkana, the Lindsey Railroad Museum and Texarkana’s Old Town, each in its own way a labor of love to preserve Texarkana’s unique past.
Just a couple of weeks ago, Rowe was honored here in Texarkana by the national DAR for her dedication to preserving that history. She was one of just 30 in the nation to receive the honor, a Historic Preservation Medal, which she was given “in recognition of outstanding achievement in historic preservation.”
“It’s kind of humbling. When I do things I don’t think about this result. I do what I do because the gutter outside needs somebody to sweep it or somebody to pick up the trash, or this building needed renovating and it was something (my husband) Auby and I could do. I can encourage David Peavy (owner of the 1894 City Market) or I can be on the historic commission or the Main Street board and give an opinion, give a business owner’s opinion or maybe a historian’s opinion,” Rowe said.
It’s this type of dedication that inspired her to start up the Downtown Neighborhood Association. She’s also taught for 25 years. Her historical vignettes of downtown Texarkana that appeared in the Gazette brought this part of the city’s past to life for many readers.
At one time in her life, Rowe wanted to be a medical technician, but she discovered she didn’t like either chemistry or blood. And so when she went back to college, she wanted to do something fun, and to her that passion is for history.
“I do history whether they pay me or not,” Rowe said, adding, “I want my students to love history.
“I do history whether they pay me or not. I want my students to love history. I want them to understand that if somebody doesn’t preserve it then none of us have it.” —Dr. Beverly Rowe
I want them to understand that if somebody doesn’t preserve it then none of us have it.”
Those articles she wrote for the Gazette started as student projects. She assigned students street addresses downtown and told them their project was to write a 130-year history of that specific address.
“They used city directories and found out when it became a building and when it was a house and who lived there and what kind of business it was,” Rowe said. “So then we turned that into the series for the Gazette. And it was from that Gazette series that they became two books, ‘Once Upon a Time’ and ‘Twice Upon a Time.’”
Want to find out information about a specific building downtown? Grab one of those books. Inside are the stories and photographs. When Rowe started them there was nothing like this available, she says. There were just city directories.
Although all this has been done, there’s more to do, she cautions. “I’ve only covered from the city’s founding in 1874 to 1920. I haven’t done anything past 1920, so that’s World War I, World War II, the Depression, Korea,” Rowe said. There’s still much more to be preserved in history, so she’d like to see it become “somebody else’s baby” to do so.
As someone who was born elsewhere, she appreciates the history here in Texarkana. Home for her is Montana.
“What I want people to know is this is the best history ever,” Rowe said. “I mean we have bootleggers and prostitutes and the army depot and Wright Patman Lake. Everything’s here.” When she hears people say there’s nothing here, she doesn’t buy it.
“They are so wrong, you know, just so wrong,” Rowe said. Her fear is no one will take up the gauntlet to preserve this history and it will die out again. “We don’t want that to happen. At least I don’t want that to happen.”
That said, she sees many good thing happening downtown and a whole bunch of people getting involved. Serving on the Main Street board gives her insight into this.
“I learned about 10 projects going on downtown that I wasn’t aware of. I think I’m pretty much aware of everything but these were some that slid under my radar,” Rowe said. “I’m really excited.”
And with a museum like Old Town, the professor sees that its streetscape of old storefronts makes a difference. It gives a look at Texarkana life circa 1890. For children, it’s something they’ve never really seen, she says.
“They don’t know anything about small stores and old downtowns. It’s really an eye opener for them to get to see it. It was really fun to create,” Rowe said, noting the Lindsey Railroad Museum is being renovated with a redesign. It will give more of a guided tour.
Rowe’s nomination was supported by recommendation letters from Mary Beck, Ina McDowell and Dr. Doris Davis. Brandy Aaron assisted with paperwork about Rowe’s committee positions, projects and resume. Tammie Duncan Blackburn of the local DAR formally nominated Rowe, who’s appreciative of the work they all put into this project.
“That’s an amazing thing,” Rowe said about gathering all of this material and writing letters. “They took the time out to write what must have been a really good letter.”
An active presence in preservation, her books and board service were all factors in receiving the DAR medal, Rowe said.