A LIFE OF SERVICE
Longtime Pottstown public servant Ron Downie dies at 82
Ron Downie, who wore almost as many leadership hats in Pottstown as he spent years here, died Friday in Nokomis, Fla., at the age of 85.
Born in 1935 in Elmsford, N.Y., to Scottish immigrants Olive (Piggot) and Alexander Downie, he moved to the Pottstown area as an infant and was alternately a landscaper, a Firestone plant worker, a bartender, a ski-slope operator, a school board member, the president of the Schuylkill River Heritage Area and the AMBUCS and the Building and Industries Exchange.
Downie was the Pottstown Elk of the Year and is a member of the Pottstown High School Alumni Honor Roll.
He served on the Pottstown 250th Anniversary Committee, the Pottstown Parks and Recreation Board and the Pottstown Cable Commission, and was a past president of the Pottstown Carousel Committee.
Downie served on borough council representing the Fifth Ward and, most recently, was the chairman of the board of the Pottstown Borough Authority, a post from which he retired in 2012.
In January 2013, borough council passed a resolution thanking him for his more than 40 years of community service to Pottstown. For that event, then-council president Stephen Toroney claimed the honors of presentation and also thanked Downie for the guidance he offered Toroney when the two served together on council.
In 2015, Downie was further recognized by being named the inaugural grand marshal of the Pottstown Independence Day Parade.
Downie graduated from Pottstown High School in 1953 and attended Penn State University, where he was a member of the freshman football team. He later attended Ursinus College.
On July 22, 1954, he married Dixie L. Shirey in Arlington, Va. They had two girls: Bonnie Downie (of Pottstown) and Sherri Downie (of Birdsboro).
He later married Constance M. Hall, in Pottstown, on April 22, 1964. They had three children: Heather Kurtz (of Pottstown), Lia Downie (of Nokomis, Fla.), and Ronald Andrew Downie (of Pottstown). They lived for many years on North Evans Street before relocating to Florida in 2016.
According to an obituary written by his grandson, Connor Kurtz, Downie worked with his father and brother building stone walls across southeastern Pennsylvania growing up.
He eventually became a manager at Firestone before going into business on his own. He was a partner in many ventures and owned the Pottstown Nursery and the Pine Forge Ski Area. He was the president of both the Pottstown American Business Club (AMBUCS) and the Building Industries Exchange (BIE).
He was also a key figure in the cleaning up and revitalizing of Riverfont Park in Pottstown and the grass amphitheater in that park bears his name.
Earlier this year, his daughter Heather Kurtz, a teacher at Lincoln Elementary School, became the first school district employee to take advantage of an incentive from the Pottstown Foundation for Education to purchase a house in the borough.
She used it to buy her parent’s longtime residence on North Evans Street, the house where she grew up.
During a 2012 interview with The Mercury in that house, Downie said it was his belief that elected officials should take “the long view” and “understand trends and prepare for what they tell us.”
Along those lines, he guided the establishment of a capital funding system for the Pottstown Borough Authority that moved away from borrowing, instead setting rates in a way that allowed for money to be put away to pay for capital expenses outlined in a five-year plan he insisted on, and that gets updated every year.
In addition to the practical side he once described with a smile to a reporter was his “farmer’s wisdom,” Downie also had a literary side.
In fact when he was recognized by borough council in 2013, he said he could not resist the “captive audience” there for his award and treated the audience to one of his poems.
“He was a lifelong writer and regaled anyone who would listen with his poetry,” Connor Kurtz wrote in his grandfather’s obituary. “He embraced digital technology and published many of his poems on his blog, The Posted Poet.
His last composition was posted on Oct. 11 and was titled “What’s a Heart For?”
In it, he wrote about being taken to the hospital with heart problems, and the suggestion by the doctor that he receive a pacemaker.
Downie’s practical side blended with his literary side in his final post as he wrote, “I asked him if implanting a pacemaker would improve my overall life issues? No, he replied. I would still be confined to a walker and would decline further from ordinary age infirmities.”
“My thought was, why in Hell would I extend an undesirable life of decline, pain, and anguish?” he wrote. “Beyond that, my thought was, I’ve given life nearly 83 years, so is there some gatekeeper keeping track of my accomplishments while living and I haven’t given enough? Or, Is my heart just telling me, Ron, you’ve done plenty but now’s the time to let go.”
In addition to his parents, he was predeceased by his brother, Andrew Downie, of Succasunna, N.J. He is survived by his wife, his five children, nine grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
A public memorial service will be held this spring at the amphitheater that bears his name in Pottstown’s Riverfront Park.