Former Osceola physician dies

Former Osceola physician and business owner Dr. Thomas J. Lower died May 25 in Ankeny at age 77.

Lower began practicing medicine in Osceola in May 1983. With the medical clinic originally located on Main Street, Lower later moved to 127 W. Washington St., where he stayed until his final retirement in July 2021.

Born in Parnell, Lower graduated from Williamsburg High School in 1965. He attended Grinnell College on a football scholarship and graduated in 1969 with a bachelors in biology and a minor in chemistry.

After college, Lower, his first wife and their young son moved to New York City, where Lower found employment as an electron microscopist doing medical research in Brooklyn. While there, he met a man who owned an oceanography development corporation in West Palm Beach, Florida, who offered him a job. The Lower family moved to Florida, and Lower began making applications to medical and dental schools.

He was accepted into dentistry school at the University of Iowa, and he studied dentistry for a year and a half before moving back to Florida to work as a restaurant manager.

A few months later, Lower was accepted to the School of Osteopathy in Des Moines. He and his family moved back to Iowa, and in 1975, Lower graduated with a degree in osteopathic surgery.

After finishing his internship in 1976, Lower took his first job in Grinnell. He practiced there for a little less than a year, then spent three years practicing in Des Moines before enlisting in the Army Medical Corps. He served in West Germany for two and a half years, then went into medical practice in Corning.

In May 1983, Osceola’s Dr. Robert Good sold his practice to Lower, who took over May 26, 1983.

Lower would serve as a family physician to Osceola and surrounding areas for the next 38 years. A brief retirement from Sept. 2014 to March 2015 had Lower return to Osceola for another six years before retiring for good. The building where he practiced now houses Ultimate Care Medical Clinic.

“...my primary enjoyment is my work. For my first seven years in Osceola, I didn’t take a vacation. I can think of only two or three occasions when I was out of town longer than a few hours,” Lower wrote in Fern Underwood’s ‘Recipes for Living’ in 2003. “Typically my work day is 10 hours long…I seldom eat lunch, but use that hour to catch up on morning phone calls and see hospital patients. I also see them following my afternoon office hours.”

He wrote that he doubted he would ever retire, noting he had known several of his patients for 20 years or more, and enjoyed seeing them.

Lower is survived by his wife, Ceree, sons Michael, Thomas (Kate) and Daniel, daughters Erin (David), Jennifer and Jill, 17 grandchildren, two great-grandchildren and 11 siblings. He was preceded in death by his parents, son Joe in 2021, two sisters, one brother, one sister-in-law and one brother-in-law.

A celebration of life is planned for from 12 to 3 p.m. on Aug. 10 in Ankeny at the Ankeny Outdoor Education Center.

An obituary for Lower may be found online at celebratelifeiowa.com.