Call for help from Iraq brings action

July 23, 2003

By Tim Christie for The Register-Guard.

Shortly before the Oregon Bach Festival began last month, artistic administrator Marla Lowen received an e-mail from her son.

U.S. Army Capt. Matt Lowen, stationed with an engineering company in Iraq, had met some Iraqi teachers who said they had no supplies for their elementary school students. So Lowen asked if his mother and father could scrounge up a few supplies and ship them over.

Lowen’s husband, Richard, spread the word at Smith Barney where he works, and soon supplies started arriving from the brokerage’s offices around the region.

When Marla Lowen’s boss, festival executive director Royce Saltzman, heard about the soldier’s request, he suggested putting a display in the lobby of the Hult Center during the music festival.

By the time the 17-day event was over, Lowen had collected enough pens, pencils, colored markers, rulers, glue sticks, coloring books, art paper and water colors to fill 27 boxes, plus $300 cash.

She’s shipping a few boxes at a time, and she’s kept them no larger than a box of copier paper, so that her son isn’t inundated with materials.

“It’s an incredibly generous and very compassionate effort on the part of everyone who contributed,” Marla Lowen said. “Whether you agree or disagree with the war, thinking of the children of Iraq and doing something for them was an incredibly supportive and generous thing for this community to do.”