{"id":31344,"date":"2013-07-25T16:37:12","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T16:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alternativejonestown.com\/?page_id=31344"},"modified":"2020-12-15T08:31:56","modified_gmt":"2020-12-15T16:31:56","slug":"bower","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=31344","title":{"rendered":"What 30 Years Has Done"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

\"\" BOWER, Donald Robert
Photos Courtesy of California
Historical Society, MSP 3800<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When anyone asks about my father, I just tell them he died in Jonestown. Some seemed shocked, others concerned or sorry. I\u2019d rather people be shocked, concerned and sorry that so many\u00a0children were lost at the hands of parents and adults.<\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t find out right away that Don Bower had died in Jonestown, only that his body was being brought back to\u00a0America. I think it was my aunt who took care of having him buried. I always wondered why he would follow anyone all the way to killing himself at the word of just a man. The last few\u00a0times I saw him in Marin County, he seemed to be almost shy. Something his children and grand children are not even close to.<\/p>\n

So surviving does not seem to be an issue. In life\u00a0we don\u2019t follow real well. We prefer to do things our way,\u00a0and if we don\u2019t like the show, we get up and leave.<\/p>\n

One thing I\u2019ve done in the intervening years is to try and learn as much as possible about what my father did at Jonestown. Who did he know?\u00a0What was his job? Was he really married to the lady he was with at Jonestown? I have a whole other family\u00a0I\u2019m related to by marriage \u2013\u00a0or not \u2013 who also died, and I have not a clue as to who any of them\u00a0are or if any of them survived and why they\u2019re not all buried together. I know for a fact my aunt \u2013 my father\u2019s sister \u2013 didn\u2019t know he had\u00a0a wife or other kids in Jonestown. It was just something else\u00a0tragic we learned along the way.<\/p>\n

News of Waco\u00a0\u2013 watching it live on CNN \u2013\u00a0just pretty much pissed me off. Children died at the hands of parents and adults, and I don\u2019t recall seeing children running from the burning buildings. Just adults. If the government\u00a0might have been a little slow to respond at Jonestown, it may have been a little too fast at\u00a0Waco. On the other hand, people at Waco were well armed and had the locals out gunned. I just hope the next time one of these groups decides it wants to take on a state or government, it at least sends the children out first.<\/p>\n

As far as surviving… harder or easier, we\u2019re surviving period. Nobody\u2019s prying us off this rock until it\u2019s time, and even then we\u2019re not going willing. Getting information through the years makes things easier. It does bother me, though, not being able to ask my father questions about things I know he would know about, such as what kind of meds can I get at the farm supply to give to the sick feral kitten that the mother cat kicked out of the litter\u00a0so I could keep it alive, and how much should I give it? It\u2019s a year later \u2013 the kitten\u2019s a cat now \u2013 so I figured it out on my own, but he would have had the answer right off.<\/p>\n

The guy I was 30 years ago wouldn\u2019t recognize the man I am now. If I told him, he was going to\u00a0have four grown kids and three grandkids,\u00a0and spend every spare minute building classic air cooled Volkswagens \u2013 and at this moment I was thinking about everyone\u2019s losses at Jonestown he\u2019d have said, fat chance.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s what I learned. Flashy suits and\u00a0giant\u00a0churches don\u2019t mean the message is from God. People know right from wrong, but you have to listen to the word from whatever God you like, not the person telling you about God. And unless Dr. Ferdinand Piech comes up with a new religion based on Volkswagen Porsche and being Catholic, I\u2019m not gonna be switching in the near future.<\/p>\n

(Greg Bower can be reached at twogoodbeingbad@aol.com<\/a><\/span>.)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When anyone asks about my father, I just tell them he died in Jonestown. Some seemed shocked, others concerned or sorry. I\u2019d rather people be shocked, concerned and sorry that so many\u00a0children were lost at the hands of parents and adults. We didn\u2019t find out right away that Don Bower had died in Jonestown, only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":31480,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-31344","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31344"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107586,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31344\/revisions\/107586"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}