Early Life
His maternal grandfather, Chester L. Garratt, an attorney by profession, was a hobbyist and researcher in many areas. Garratt gave him his first "rare" coin, a well worn 1893 Columbian half dollar. This would be his first exposure to numismatics.
In 1945–46, his next exposure to numismatics was a friend’s home in which a dozen or more Indian pennies were embedded face-up in a concrete walk near the front door. In 1948, his family moved to Forty Fort, Pennsylvania (about an hour away from Honesdale).
As a 13-year-old high school student, Bowers's interests included reptiles, scouting, short-wave radio, Strombecker kit models of World War II airplanes, and rocks and minerals. During this time Bowers became an interested in the written word. He received Raymond L. Ditmars' Reptiles of North America from his mother as a Christmas gift in 1952. According to Bowers, Ditmars, who was curator of reptiles at the New York Zoological Garden (Bronx Zoo), had a way of making just about anything sound fascinating. From such experiences, Bowers learned the power of the written word and how it can spur one to a great enthusiasm for acquisition.
Read more about this topic: Q. David Bowers
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Very early in our children’s lives we will be forced to realize that the “perfect” untroubled life we’d like for them is just a fantasy. In daily living, tears and fights and doing things we don’t want to do are all part of our human ways of developing into adults.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)
“So soon did we, wayfarers, begin to learn that man’s life is rounded with the same few facts, the same simple relations everywhere, and it is vain to travel to find it new.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)