Family
He was married in Woodford, England, January 29, 1943 to Betty Eleanor, daughter of George Henry and Mabel Jane (Mather) Dunham of Wanstead, England, and has three surviving children: Elizabeth Esthermay, who married John A. Riordon; Marian Jane, who married Charles M. Kriston; and George Langstroth, who married Justine Allen, then Kim Borkowitz. Seven other children died in infancy, and he had two adopted sons: David Lorrain (died in childhood) and Michael Lorrain. Clyde L. Cowan died in Bethesda, Maryland, May 24, 1974, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
His family has blossomed to include 11 grandchildren and 8 great-grandchildren.
His grandson James Riordon, a former physicist and engineer who heads the American Physical Society media relations office, initially conceived of the distributed computing project Einstein@home, which searches gravitational wave data for signals from massive rotating objects such a pulsars. His granddaughter, Barbara Riordon Maher, earned her MS in Emergency Management in 2006 and is a PhD candidate in Public Health Administration. She is currently the Emergency Preparedness Coordinator for Dare County North Carolina Department of Public Health. She is a retired Maryland State Police Trooper/Flight Paramedic. Her publications include articles in plant physiology as well as medical nuclear, biological, chemical, and explosive response for the Department of Defense. She has obtained the rank of Major in the Maryland Army National Guard and serves as the Operations Officer for the JFHQ Medical Detachment. Her two sons, Joseph and Patrick, are college students seeking degrees in biology and emergency services. Joseph is currently serving in the Maryland Army National Guard as a 15P, Aviation Operations Specialist.
Cowan was a direct descendant of L. L. Langstroth, the "Father of Modern Beekeeping", and a distant relative of Katherine Drexel, a Catholic saint.
A biography can be found in The National Cyclopedia of American Biography Vol. 58 published by James T. White & Company Clifton, New Jersey, 1979.
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