Shirley Ann Bowers' Obituary
Shirley Ann Canales Bowers of Dallas Texas passed quietly on her 88th birthday, February 11, 2016. Shirley was born February 11, 1928 in Houston, Texas to Annie Corinne Munro of Halifax, Nova Scotia and Isidoro Canales of Monterrey, Mexico. In 1937 Shirley moved with her family from Houston to Dallas where she attended Cumberland Hill Elementary, Spence Junior High, and North Dallas High School, from which she graduated in 1945. Through out her life she was an active member in the Cumberland Hill Alumni Association and other organizations dedicated to preserving the community in which she had grown up. While attending High School, Shirley worked with her mother at the 8th Service Command in Dallas, Texas in order to help with the war effort. Immediately after her high school graduation, Shirley worked for the Federal Government at the Farm Credit Administration. Eventually she enrolled at North Texas Agricultural College (later named the University of Texas at Arlington) where she studied Radio Production, graduating in 1948. After college, she worked for the Southern Trust and Mortgage Company for seven years. In 1950 Shirley went on a blind date with a young Navy radio operator named Marvin Bowers, just prior to his shipping out for the Korean War. After the war, the two re-connected and they were married in the home of their dear friend Irma Frye on December 18, 1953. The two lived on Ruth Ann Drive in Dallas and had a lively network of friends and social functions. In 1957 Shirley gave birth to her daughter, Beth Ann Bowers, and in 1962, her son, Mark Lee Bowers. Shirley stopped working prior to the birth of her daughter and remained at home to care for her two children. While much of her life was dedicated to raising her family and helping her husband with his business, Shirley also found time to pursue one of her great passions, genealogy. Fearing that her family’s history might be lost if she did not take on the task of preserving it, she dedicated decades to painstakingly researching the roots of the Munro and Canales families, diligently typing out the research on her typewriter and publishing it in the 1990s as The Munro Manuscript: Descendants of William Munro of West River, Pictou County, Nova Scotia (1992). She sent copies to libraries all over the world where either family had lived and thus preserved created a lasting record of the family history that otherwise would have been lost. This labor of love helped to preserve the legacy of her mother, grandmother, and all those who had come before her, which was her ultimate goal in writing the manuscript. The history served as not just a dry rendition of names dates and places, but as a lively document full of letters and personal insights that introduced all that read it to the cast of characters who made up Shirley’s close and distant family history. She brought to life women such as her “Nana” Helen, and after reading the beautiful correspondence contained within the manuscript, it is little wonder that when it came time for Shirley to choose the name her grandchildren would call her she chose “Nana” as well. Already an avid letter writer, her work in genealogy helped her to maintain a large network of correspondence all over the country and abroad, which she continued for most of her life. This led to a lifelong passion for travel, which she engaged in as often as possible in order to see all of the places her friends’ and relations’ letters had described to her. While Shirley’s skills and accomplishments could take pages to note, we would be remiss if we did not relate one of the accomplishments she was most proud of: her skill in sewing, knitting, and crocheting. For these skills she won many prizes and accolades, including prizes at the State Fair of Texas for her entries. She took great pride in creating works and in teaching others how to create items with the needle, a legacy that will follow her for many generations to come. In her manuscript of her family’s history, Shirley included a short entry on herself. In the entry she wrote that, of her many pastimes, taking care of her grandchildren was her favorite and most cherished. She is survived by her 5 grandchildren: Megan Leigh Malone, Molly Jo Malone Hodson, Timothy Austin Malone, Christina Martinez Bennett, and Matthew Lee Bowers-Flores, who all carry with them the lessons they learned at her dining room table and will carry on her legacy in their thoughts and actions. She is also survived by the dashing young Navy man turned CPA who became her husband of 62 years, Marvin Lee Bowers, with whom she travelled the world and raised her two children, Beth and Mark. Shirley was immensely proud of both of her children as evidenced in the written words in her manuscript, and as anyone who she ever talked to can attest. She is also survived by her son-in-law, James Malone, her daughter-in-law, Wilma Bowers-Flores, her grandchildren’s spouses, Cary Hodson and Michelle Thomas Malone, as well as her two great grandchildren, Madyson Martinez and Avalyn Rose Bennett, many cousins, and other relatives and friends. She was preceded in death by her father, Isidoro Canales, her mother, Anna Munro Canales, her brother, Isidoro Munro Canales, and a son, Kerry Lynn Bowers. Shirley will be missed as a loving wife, mother, nana, and friend by all of those who survive her. Memorial service for Shirley Bowers will be held on Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 12:00 PM in The Abbey Chapel at Restland Funeral Home. Funeral arrangements have been entrusted to Restland Funeral Home and Memorial Park, 13005 Greenville Avenue, at Restland Road, Dallas, TX 75243.
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