Paternal, friend, loving husband: These were some of the words used to describe former Cal State Long Beach provost David Dowell, who died suddenly of a heart attack Oct. 25 at age 65.
Dowell’s memorial was held Saturday at the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden with many of his family, friends and former coworkers in attendance.
Before retiring in June, Dowell served as a senior academic administrator beginning in July 2013. Before that, Dowell had several roles on campus, including psychology professor and associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts.
As an administrator, Dowell was well-spoken and got along with his fellow staff. He would regularly play tennis with his friend, retired CSULB psychology professor Tom Stevens, for the past 35 years.
“I would say he’s one of the two best administrators I’ve ever seen at the university, and I was here for 39 years,” Stevens said. “He was maybe the most effective on his effects on students. We got other good ones too, but Dave was exceptional.”
Former graduate student Tony Ostos was 25-years-old when he had then 27-year-old Dowell as a professor. According to Ostos, when Dowell was teaching psychology, he would always provide insight and help his students succeed in their career.
“What I learned from him was excellent. I used it in my professional career,” Ostos said. “After I finished here at Cal State Long Beach, I developed a successful gang prevention program and I used what Dr. Dowell had taught me about formative evaluation and summative evaluation to continually evaluate the work that I was doing.”
The serene atmosphere, the sound of the waterfall and ducks and the mass number of attendees wearing colorful floral shirts set the mood of who Dowell was – fun, caring and a Hawaiian shirt lover.
In a mass email sent out to CSULB students and faculty, the Dowell family requested that any attendees wear a Hawaiian shirt in his honor.
Throughout her entire life, Dowell’s daughter Laura said she only knew him wearing a suit. It wasn’t until his retirement that he embraced Hawaiian shirts.
No one, not even his family, knows where his affinity for Hawaiian shirts originated.
“That’s all he wanted for his birthday,” Laura said, wearing a blue blue Hawaiian shirt of her father’s. “So, for his birthday, we only gave him Hawaiian shirts.”
Despite his outgoing attitude, his vegetarian diet and healthy appearance, Dowell suffered a heart attack when biking at Palos Verde Mountain Oct. 25.
A Tennessee native, Dowell acquired a degree in psychology from Middle Tennessee State University in 1973, and later obtained his master’s and doctorate from the University of Tennessee. He then moved to teaching at CSULB where he met his wife, Nancy Manriquez, who was an undergrad student at the time.
“He was never my professor,” Manriquez emphasized when discussing about how she met Dowell at an event. The couple has three daughters, Julia, Laura and Maria.
Dowell would never miss any of his children’s performances or games, according to his daughter Maria. He valued education and teaching for his daughters and would regularly take his family on both international and domestic trips.
The current dean of the College of the Arts, Cyrus Parker-Jeannette, said that Dowell deeply cared about his family and that even though she had her own father, Dowell was like a father-figure to her.
“That’s weird to feel like you don’t really know your dad,” Laura said. “but you could hear about all this stuff from different people and you get to learn more.”
Dowell spent his final days going on bike rides and bringing in freshly grown vegetables from his garden. He initially planned to begin working on several projects around his house with his wife.
“That was the biggest shock,” Manriquez said. “He was somebody that was so healthy and took such good care of themselves would go like that.”
According to Manriquez, heart disease runs in Dowell’s side of the family.
“On the same day he died, the last thing he told me was to eat more bananas,” Laura said, speaking of a time when he saw her drinking a protein shake. “So I’m never going to look at bananas the same way again, but I had one a week ago in honor of him.”
This article has been updated to reflect the positions of David Dowell and Cyrus Parker-Jeannette.