Leadership Recognition

Joan Bowman

I have the advantage of knowing Joan pretty well. We celebrated our tenth anniversary in September and have a nice life together. You’ll rarely see Joan on any COP boating trips. Other than Red, White and Boom excursions in a raft or sea kayak, she’s content to be by the water and read by the water but not spend so much time IN the water. The reason I’m putting her in the volunteer spotlight is that she has been a huge help to me over the years with computing and document construction and advice. I don’t remember if I even knew how to use a computer when I first became boating chair but I do okay now. She had a brief stint as board secretary during an acrimonius period and was relieved when that ended.

Joan has been a good soldier over the years. She has put up with my ever-changing schemes and sticking her with odd adventures, including fogbound midnight paddles in the UP. I have documentation that she paddled a duck on the Casselman. Joan and I were cooking for an intermediate school. It was the longest day of her paddling life. She was completely out of adrenaline by the end of an admittedly long day and she cared not whether she surfed, swam or not. That was when Katie Dick was still in diapers and Kevin Gagnon was still standing up in whitewater rivers...a while back. She did submit to one rafting trip on the Lower New but that was only because Mike Wadkowski was guiding. Although she might have found that trip a little bit fun, the prospect of getting smacked in the face with waves has kept her out of inflatables since.

What she does love is reading, feminist science fiction, travel and politics. There is always a pile of books and magazines somewhere. It’s like those birthday candles that don’t blow out. When one stack of reading disappears, another one grows on a different horizontal surface. She has taken me to Toronto and San Francisco and Madison for city tours, something I never would have done on my own, and is smitten with our little corner of the Grandview area. She dreams of writing a feminist utopian sci-fi novel. She is fiercely supportive of her nephews and is a wonderful aunt to them.

There’s a lot more and most of it’s fit to print but at least now you know her a little bit and a little bit more of my back story.

This photo of Joan may be the only time she ever really enjoyed being in a sea kayak. She found out how much steerage rudders can supply and smiled!

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