Betty Lowman Carey, 1939
Beatrice Annette Carey was born July 31, 1914 in Anacortes, Washington. She was the eldest and only daughter of Jean Faith Perry and Raymond B. Lowman.
“She swam across the Guemes Channel at age fourteen and later swam ten miles to Cypress. She flew down hills standing on her bicycle, swan-dived from yardarms, and hoped to enter the Olympics as a discus thrower. As high school valedictorian, she talked about “Women in Athletics” despite disapproving townsfolk who “thought my topic most unsuitable.”
Her father, Ray Lowman, gave her a dugout canoe when she turned 18. She named it BiJaBoJi after her brothers and decided to row to Alaska, but Ray insisted on college first. In 1937, four days after graduating with a journalism degree from the University of Washington, Lowman rowed north.
Without telling Ray. He was in Alaska and upon hearing the news, he called on the Coast Guard to stop her. Too late. Betty was off on a 66-day adventure, at one point losing everything but the dugout and her sleeping bag. She fashioned a paddle from bark, finished the journey at Ketchikan, and returned home to wild acclaim.
After her return, she worked on a reef netter and became the first woman admitted to the Fishermen’s Union of the Pacific. She broke another barrier in 1939 by signing on with a halibut schooner fishing the Gulf of Alaska. “She worked like a Trojan and wanted to do everything,” reported the skipper, who awarded her a “man’s share” of the catch.
In 1940, she was shipwrecked off Nova Scotia when the schooner on which she crewed hit a rock. She spent three days on an uninhabited island before being rescued by lobster fishermen, then hiked 143 miles to Halifax. Too proud to contact her family for money, she found work.
When an evening swim took her past destroyers in the military zone, Betty was accused of being a spy. Kicked out of Canada, she eventually made train fare home and met husband-to-be Neil Carey along the way.”
Bette married Neil G. Carey on December 26, 1941. They had two sons: George Lowman Carey and Eugene Lowman Carey. Neil and Bette spent most of their later years at Sandspit and Puffin Cove in the Queen Charlotte Islands in British Columbia, Canada.
Bette Lowman Carey passed away on March 16, 2011 and is interred at Grand View Cemetery.
— Quoted information comes from Colorful Characters and Local Lore
