Lowell Parker Dabbs

95, Riverside

No particular art form, no single type of expression, could contain the creativity in Lowell Dabbs.

Over the course of his life, this man who had “a poet’s heart,” as his family says, devoted himself not only to the written word, but also to photography and architectural design.

“He was quiet, often shy,” his daughter, Ellen Parker, said. “It was an internal commitment to art, to things that were beautiful.”

Contracting COVID- 19 at 95, he died May 25 in Riverside.

Born in Burlington, N. C., in 1924, Lowell Parker Dabbs served in the Navy during World War II, assigned to a destroyer in the Pacific. Having already attended some college, he returned home after the war to earn his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at USC, subsequently taking work as an English professor at Bakersfield College in 1955.

It was a position he would hold for many years, eventually serving as department chair, teaching while writing poems, plays, professional articles and textbooks. Dabbs married a colleague, Phyllis Selby.

From the time he was a boy, he had dreamed of building his own house,” their daughter said. “He and Mom did that.”

The Selby- Dabbs residence was later included in a 2019 symposium and tour. The Bakersfield Californian noted that its Midcentury Modern design allowed “copious light into the living room” and made the roof appear “as though it’s f loating above the structure.”

Dabbs retired in 1979 and moved to Santa Barbara, where he attended the Brooks Institute of Photography to pursue yet another longtime fascination. Drawn to taking pictures of nature, he continued to write and served as writing coach at Santa Barbara City College.

The final years of his life were spent at an assisted- living center in Riverside, near the home of his daughter and sonin- law.

“He did lots of different things,” Parker said. “The thread through his life was these interests he had and some of the dreams he was able to fulfill.”

— David Wharton