Edith G. Lowell

BUCKFIELD – Edith G. Lowell, 99, died Monday, March 30, 2026, at her home on North Hill Road in Buckfield. She was born November 19, 1926 in East Buckfield, the youngest child of Almer and Gertrude Gammon.

She married Ralph E. Lowell in 1948 and they started a family while living with her parents in East Buckfield. In 1950 they purchased the Stan and Elsie Foster farm, where they both lived and worked for the rest of their lives.

Along with building a family, they were building a business: the family was integral to the enterprises that fed the family. Whether it was farming, logging, or other aspects of wood manufacturing, Edith worked hand-in hand with Ralph. Early on, they had a shingle machine, and while nursing and caring for her growing family, she spent time in the shingle mill bundling

the shingles as Ralph made them. For one of her deliveries, Ralph took her to the hospital in a GMC pulp and lumber truck. Her brother Alton liked to joke “to the CMG (Central Maine General) in the GMC!”

Her dedication to family was earnest and extreme: Edith and her sister Caroline were the main caregivers for their mother at the end of her life, and her father spent the last months of his life in Edith’s care at her family home.

Born six years after women secured the right to vote and 23 months before the start of the Great Depression, these events framed both the joys and sorrows of her life. She embraced the role of homemaker, but spent her life looking out from it on a world that was questioning and rearranging old roles as her generation lived through them.

Even as her growing family demanded more of her time, she still kept the business accounts while running the household. She shepherded her family through the catastrophic loss of the family home to fire in 1961, and the subsequent rebuilding.

Running a household with a family of 10 – what did that mean? Along with all the requisite shopping and planning, Edith and the girls kept a big garden and canned much of what it produced: beans, corn, carrots, beets, pickles, relishes … in fact, one of the conditions of a major house remodel was a huge root cellar and shelves upon shelves to hold her canning.

Fresh-cooked food was always abundant: pies, cakes, and breads; meats, potatoes, and vegetables. It wasn’t unusual for her to prepare three multi-course meals daily during the workweek. Coming in from work, that food that was always ready to go. Edith baked a killer custard pie.

Edith and Ralph loved playing cards. Social interactions with friends or relatives generally involved a game of Sixty-three. For years they had a regular meet-up with her sister Caroline and her husband Danny, where the women paired off against the men with friendly banter marking the occasion. Edith was also a cutthroat cribbage player who never missed her chance to take muggins.

In the 1980s, Ralph and Edith started spending time at their camp, the former customs house along the railroad in Holeb outside of Jackman. Edith went with Ralph on long fishing hikes along the Moose River and local streams.

Their last big project together was a big patch of blueberries that Ralph planted with their good friend John Meader. Ralph and John picked the berries and Edith helped with sorting them in the evenings. Those blueberry bushes are still in production.

Her daughter Edith and son-in-law Douglas lived with and cared for her in her final years, while she doted on her two cats, Cyrus and Izzy. By their girth you could see that Edith never lost her

talent for expressing her love through the food that she prepared.

She is survived by seven of her children: Elwood Lowell and wife Gloria, Rebecca Lowell and partner Rick Jewell, Dana Lowell and wife Seri, Edith Pepin and husband Douglas, all of Buckfield; Loraine Lowell, of Portland; Judi Riley and husband Robert “Bob,” of Saco; and Elaine Nault and husband Gary, of Vashon Island, Wash.; along with 12 grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren, five great-great-grandchildren, and a special niece, Sandra Cowett.

She was predeceased by her husband Ralph, her parents, her siblings Woodrow Gammon, Alton Gammon, Pauley Turner, Louise Hines, Gertrude Hayford, and Caroline Scott; and a daughter, Natalie Lowell.

A graveside service will be held May 16 at 1 p.m., at the Damon Cemetery in Buckfield. Extended family and friends are welcome.Online condolences may be shared with her family at http://www.chandlerfunerals.com. Arrangements are under the care of Chandler Funeral Home, 45 Main Street, South Paris.

Edith would have appreciated donations made to organizations involved in cancer care and research, and in animal protection.