IN MEMORIAM
John F. Lowndes • 1931-2021
PHOTO COURTESY OF ORLANDO SHAKES
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here was a time when giants walked the earth. That was $500,000 and $300,000, respectively.) certainly true in Central Florida, when a cadre of civic-mindJust a rock’s throw from the theater complex, another Lowndes ed businesspeople influenced growth and development from legacy is inside the Orlando Museum of Art. The gigantic green and their downtown offices and could make just about anything happen blue glass sculpture, Cobalt & Citron by artist Dale Chihuly, was purvia a timely telephone call. chased and donated by the law firm to celebrate its 35th anniversary. Most are now gone — but their names remain prominent in histoDown the street at the Orange County Courthouse, a huge bronze ries that cover Orlando’s boom years in the 1960s and beyond. statue — Triumphant Spirit, which depicts an angel holding a trumpet John F. Lowndes, who died in February at age 90, was a powerhouse — overlooks the rotunda because some 20 years ago former Orange land-use attorney and an early County Mayor Linda Chapin partner with builders Lester Zimasked Lowndes if he would help merman, Lester Mandell and Jack raise funds to acquire public art Lazar in Greater Construction for the new building. His firm reCorp. — which built more than sponded by buying the impressive 10,000 homes from 1965 before work and gifting it to the county. the company was sold in 2005 to Lowndes, who completed his nationally traded Meritage Homes. undergraduate studies at Duke Lowndes’ law firm, first known University, served for a time as a as Lowndes, Drosdick, Doster, Marine Corps captain and was Kantor & Reed — later rebrandstationed in Pensacola and Miami, ed as simply Lowndes — is one where he became enchanted with of the five largest in the region Florida. Following his stint in the and celebrated its 50th annivermilitary, he returned to Durham Lowndes and his wife, Rita, offered a generous contribution that led to the sary in 2019. With a focus on real construction of the John and Rita Lowndes Shakespeare Center in Loch Haven Park. and graduated from the Duke estate, it represented — and still University School of Law. represents — major lenders and Although Lowndes’ professiondevelopers prepping massive projects. al career began in North Carolina, by 1959 he found himself back in But the courtly Lowndes — son of a law professor raised in Durham, the Sunshine State (although he never lost his passion for Blue Devils North Carolina — wasn’t obsessed with growth for growth’s sake. He basketball). He worked for other firms before he and three partners sought to improve Central Florida’s quality of life through significant launched their own storied practice a decade later — just as the region’s charitable work focused largely, but not exclusively, on the arts. post-Disney explosion was beginning to reverberate. He chaired the boards of the Orlando Museum of Art, Winter Park As a lawyer, Lowndes was acknowledged as one of the best. He Memorial Hospital (now AdventHealth Winter Park), the Winter belonged to the Florida Supreme Court Historical Society, was a past Park Health Foundation, the Friends of the Mennello Museum, the president of the Orange County Bar Association and earned about UCF Foundation and the UCF College of Business Administration. every professional distinction available to practicing attorneys. He also served on the Central Florida Community Foundation fiBut friends remember Lowndes as an unpretentious family man with nance committee and was an Orange County School Board trustee an endearing sense of humor who enjoyed casual weekly games at the during desegregation, offering a steady hand during a tense time. The Winter Park Golf Course with Margeson, a physician and fellow Shakes list of good works goes on and on. donor. The game’s “rules” — if they could be described as such — were Lowndes and his wife, Rita — also a formidable community activcustom designed to maximize enjoyment and minimize dejection. ist with a suite of good causes all her own as well as a love of ShakeNamed (belatedly) as Winter Park Magazine Influentials in 2019, the speare — offered a generous contribution that led to construction of Lowndeses’ print profile called upon the Bard to describe the couple: the John and Rita Lowndes Shakespeare Center in Loch Haven Park. “How far that little candle throws his beams!” wrote William ShakeLongtime locals will remember that the Orlando Shakespeare Fesspeare in Merchant of Venice. “So shines a good deed in a weary world!” tival — renamed Orlando Shakes in 2018 — debuted in 1989 and That observation, we wrote, is certainly applicable to John and Rita staged productions at Lake Eola’s Walt Disney Amphitheater. The Lowndes. “These big-hearted beam-throwers have undoubtedly made outdoor setting could be charming — but only if the weather was our world less weary — and more shiny — through their countless right, the pigeons behaved themselves and the noise of downtown good deeds.” traffic wasn’t too intrusive. In addition to wife Rita and daughter Amy, Lowndes is survived by In 2000, the Lowndeses donated $750,000 as seed money toward children Elizabeth McIntosh and Joseph, Jennifer and John Lowndes — a $3.5 million transformation of the old Orlando Science Center into who was elected mayor of Maitland in January — along with 12 granda state-of-the-art, four-theater complex. (Two like-minded couples, children. — Randy Noles Ken and Trisha Margeson and Sig and Marilyn Goldman, added
64 W I N T E R P A R K M A GAZI N E | SP RI N G 2021
