Mike Bowers

COLLINS OFFNER: This is Molly Collins Offner. I'm interviewing Michael R. Bowers for the Overbeck Capitol Hill history project. Today's date is February 25, 2025. Mike owns Bowers Fancy Dairy Products at the historic Eastern Market on Capitol Hill.

Bowers is a widely known Capitol Hill institution. This past October, Mike and the Bowers family celebrated their 60th anniversary in business. Mike's family has not only a long history as purveyors of fine cheeses on Capitol Hill, but a strong link to Washington, D.C.,  dating back to the late 1800s. Before we explore that history, let's begin with the origins of the Bowers Fancy Dairy Products. Mike, how did the Bowers Fancy Dairy Products get started?

BOWERS: Well, it had been my grandfather, Harris Rockford Bowers. He had been a long time in the grocery store business leading up to then. In October of 1964, the shop became available for purchase. The long-term family that owned the business, the Sweeneys, their father had passed away, and the widow was looking to sell the business.

Now Sweeney was not always at Eastern Market. He had only been there maybe a year at the time. He was at other markets throughout Washington, D.C., but as Washington went through economic redevelopment, a lot of its older markets were torn down and merchants like Sweeney were moved to the historic Eastern Market. So on October 1, the bill of sale says that my grandfather purchased the business from William Sweeney's estate, and that's when we took on our first apron and started up the business.

COLLINS OFFNER: So in that 60 years, the Bowers family as a going concern has weathered changes and challenges in Eastern Market, the dairy industry, and the community at large. Can you share some of those challenges?

BOWERS: Well, the long lineage, of course, but I think different times throughout Washington, starting with the 60s, certainly with the civil rights movements and things of that nature taking place in Washington. Washington itself was undergoing a great deal of change. So that created a little bit of challenge from the upstart.

But the merchants in Eastern Market, some of whom were long established like the Glasgows, had a customer base, as did the Sweeneys who came to Eastern Market and the Calomirises and others. So when we consolidated the Market from the other systems, it seemed to be that was a good start to a decent business model.

And then through time, in the 70s, my grandfather passed away in 1976, and my father, who was with the U.S. Secret service, decided that he would continue the business, and he did. So what that meant was we needed to bring on staffing.

One long term fixture at the eastern market was Jack Cully, who people knew, and he started with us around 1978. He was part-time. He was not full-time. He was in pharmaceutical sales. Later when he went into retirement, he  wanted to stay at the shop at a more full-time basis and my dad and him worked on that together.

From the very get-go, we had other families as well. We had the Colvins. One of the Colvins purchased the Miller stand across the way. They were a long-time family friend of my grandfather. They worked at the market. I think that the point is that throughout our history, we've always had family members and friends and other people working to keep the Market and the cheese shop going. [Bowers later noted: Jack Miller had a meat and sausage stand where Canales Meats is today and made homemade roast beef. Miller always wore a white gulf hat and taught me about cross marketing amongst the merchants. He sold his business to Bob (?) Colvin, Jr., and I am still in touch with his daughter Heidi. There may have been another Miller Meats where Fine Sweet Shoppe is now, but I am not referring to that.]

In terms of the changes, I think it was probably in the early mid 70s, I guess, when the announcement of Metro came in. And so where you'd think that would create opportunity, we actually had a pretty stable customer base that was coming to us by cars from Maryland and Virginia and even throughout Washington itself. So we had the people there.

That was one of the things that the Market developed. At the time it was kind of a food desert. [There] wasn't much around Washington to go shop and pick things up but with the Metro that also had created the opportunity for the expansion to more of a tourism based model, which you see with the flea market and the outside. And so that's another layer to the model that got added over time.

Early in my time with the Market, it was predominantly a fresh food market and a farmer's line. And so that was my genesis. That's was what my earlier recollections were. So that was a change.

And then the other thing that kind of changed were the blue laws. We had the expansion to Sundays. So that was another change that occurred during our time at the Market.

Initially, many of the merchants felt that just by creating another day, another Sunday, we would just transfer some of our business from from the Saturday market to the Sunday. And in part, they probably were right. Definitely initially. I don't know that it necessarily expanded the business out, but it gave a better service and opportunity to our customer base for sure.

And then, what else happened over time? Had the fire. You know, for several years leading up to that, different committees within Eastern market were kind of redesigning the Market, as it were. And so with that … We had the fire, and prior to the fire we had people working on a restoration of the market and after the fire that changed the equation quite a bit.

So that was obviously a traumatic experience for the merchants and the farmers and everybody else the community, as well. But together we just kind of pulled it up and and kept on marching, so to speak.

It wasn't the first time the Market was considered for redevelopment, too. Back in the 70s that occurred under the Barry administration as well. And they were trying to figure out how to make more space in the Market. They talked about putting a second layer on the South Hall. So we've kind of lived through every iteration of how you can configure the Market. And I'm pleased that the South Hall’s remained as a historical feature to the community as it has.

COLLINS OFFNER: So the management of the Eastern Market has changed through the period as well. As you noted, you were very involved in the restoration of the Market, through the various committees and structures. What are your experiences there?

BOWERS: It's my understanding that at one point in time, the Market transferred over to D.C. government inventory. It wasn't always under D.C. government inventory.

So when my grandfather purchased the [cheese] market, it was maybe owned by the federal government or a component of the federal government, I don't exactly know all the details of that. But what I do know is that some point, during the first bicentennial, we transferred the asset of the Market over [from private to government management]. [Eastern Market is currently managed by the D.C. Department of General Services.] And it was a new thing to them. They really didn't know how to handle it or what to do.

So the Glasgows, who had been collecting rents from us before, had stayed as the rent collector, so to speak, but they were …  the management. They certainly paid for the lights and made sure things were operating.

But there was another entity that people seemed to forget about. It was called Cen-East, and Cen-East was in the South Hall. It was the area that was the Calomirises and the Millers of the time and others, in the south end of the of the South Hall, which was a separate component. [In 1963, occupancy of the Market changed when 15 merchants were forced to relocate from Center City Fish Market at Fifth and K Streets NW. They formed the Cen-East Cooperative.] The Glasgows would collect one rent from the entire group, and we would pay it on to them. The farmers’ rents were also collected by the Glasgows as well. And they were very nominal fees at the time.

So the whole idea was under the original plan to bring food to the market, to the community. And that was its mission. And that’s a mission that we maintain today.

So from then the Eastern Market Act [the Eastern Market Open Air Retailing Temporary Act of 1998] occurred, I think that was around 1998. And at that time that transferred the management of at least the South Hall [also the North Hall and the farmers line] over to a private entity [outside managers Stuart Smith and Bruce Cook, working with a citizens’ advisory group, the Eastern Market Community Advisory Committee].

Site management ran the market, at least our portion, very economically. The fees, their expenses for collection, were not great. It was not expensive.

And so then, just after the fire––that's in 2007––the management of it transferred over to D.C. government. [That’s] when we went to [the temporary building] called the East Hall, which was across the street at the 300 block of [Seventh Street SE].

It was, you know, if you look at it from the need of having to repair the Market and to get the Market up and running, one of the best possible outcomes because it put infrastructure over into 300 block that would be reused. They used the salt dome [the temporary structure used for the vendors was similar to the salt dome or equipment storage shelters the the Department of Transportation uses]. That's where we lived for a couple years while the Market got rebuilt.

Probably having the Market rebuilt with some of the historical ecological issues, maybe lead or other things, may not have been the best practice as well. So for us to have vacated the spot while the Market got repaired was probably something much needed.

COLLINS OFFNER: And the pandemic, we can't forget the pandemic and the impact that had the market.

BOWERS: Yeah, the pandemic was … You know, we always knew that the food element of the Market was an essential business. And that was kind of built into the legislation. That's what people kind of recognized that, you know––we need to maintain the fresh food element of the Market, as well as the farmers line. And so the pandemic created a period of time where we could figure out how we could safely bring product in.

We were able to demonstrate that we were able to provide for the community and get products to the Market, to the community at the time. And I thought that was an interesting challenge. We reduced our staff a little bit, so we weren't tripping over each other, so to speak. So we had one or two people at the counters.

[For] the Market itself, the Market Manager reduced the number of customers that could come in. That may have been a little bit over done, precautionary on the government's side. I don't think it was necessarily in line with the other grocery stores. I think the grocery stores had a few more customers come in. And we felt a little bit bad because our customers would be waiting out in the cold to get into the shop, but they were very loyal customers and we really appreciate their patronage.

COLLINS OFFNER: Another area that I thought we might want to explore is sort of the changes in the dairy industry in general. You made comments in other interviews.
We were talking a little bit about changes in the dairy industry and how they reflected in the Bowers business.

BOWERS: Absolutely.You look at our region itself. I live out in Loudoun County, and in Loudoun County, there [were] hundreds of farms that were all dairy farms. Now there's one.

Over the period of time that we were in business … 1964, that was about the time of LBJ, Lyndon Baines Johnson. That's when agribusiness started to take off. We wanted big farms, big business, big ag. And so as a result of that, we got away from important things like breed types. I mean, what is the breed of the cows that were getting our milks from?

We got away from what are the grains? You know, what were they actually eating and consuming? And so in the effort to create a lot of liquid milk, we got away from the nutritional aspects of what we were producing. That’s not to say that everything we were selling was bad because we were kind of diligent about what we brought in.

The other thing that was kind of missing at the time and when we first came in was European products. People weren't really conversant on things like even Roquefort at the time, which was an old sheep's milk cheese from France, of course. And they weren't really as conversant on the European cheeses as consumers at large.

They weren't as diligent about the nutritional value of the fluid milks. And so you know, at that time, think about food in general. That's when we were thinking about going to space and so foods like Tang [an instant orange drink that was a staple during the Gemini and Apollo space missions] … instant type products started coming out on the shelves, too. So we started to develop new product lines and things based on our philosophy as a society [regarding] how we needed to provide nutrition to a growing population.

So over the years, we certainly have seen a little bit of light on that and things like the European model of food production, where you have terms like transhumance, which is having the the herds go up the Alps where you get different biospheres of probiotics into your products. It’s something that's now being considered. Now we don't have the Alps here in the United States, but we do have what we call rotational grazing, which is another practice. And we already have seen the proliferation of smaller herds, we're paying attention to milk types, jersey cow … A2 proteins is something else that we're looking for in our products. So I think the change in the dairy industry is that we're seeing smaller is better. We're going for the larger bang for the buck. It could be a little bit more expensive, but it's going to be better for the consumer in the long run.

COLLINS OFFNER: So, I know you have some interesting stories about your father, who was in the Secret Service while also running the Bowers enterprise.

BOWERS: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, my dad, first let me clarify, he wasn't a gun-toting Secret Service agent. He was more on the H[uman] R[esources] side. He was in the training side of business. And so that kind of spilled over into the cheese shop as well and how we would approach training his new employees and things of that nature.

So he was on a 40-hour federal work week. And so his weekends were his. So he would come to work at the cheese shop, as would I. And he would be able to just make sure that the shop was staffed, managed, and our customers were taken care of.

And so that started around 1976 when my grandfather passed away. My father retired from the Secret Service in, I think, 1994. So it was during that period of time he was on dual duty. During that time, I always continued to work the shop. I raised my family and I just had a love of the community, love of the Market. And that's something I knew that I wanted to do when when it was my turn to do it.

There's a cute little story [that] when I was about 12, 13 years old, my dad would take my mom and I to the cheese shop during the summer and we worked the summer months while Jack and other people may have gone on vacation and done some things. It gave just a little bit more flexibility to how we scheduled things around.

Probably I was about 14 or so, I promised a centurion, a guy that was 100 years old–– this was around 1977, I'd say––that when it was my turn to run the business … He asked, “Would you do it?” I said, “Yeah.” So it wasn't really a contract. I was a little bit young for that, but it was really something that kind of struck me. But if you think about it, the people that I met at the time, they were people with vast experience and intelligence and just fun to talk to.

But that gentleman was probably born around 1877. So it's just that touch with history at a very young age and in a very historic building that really meant a lot to me. And people from all sorts of different societies would come in, we would just kind of talk about what they were up to. So it was interesting.

COLLINS OFFNER: And your background is in finance.

BOWERS: My degree was in accounting. I went to West Virginia University. I ended up being a revenue manager for a company called First American and CoreLogic. That was what I ended up doing, but I also had roles in sales and training and marketing, which helps with the cheese shop because it gives me different experiences to draw on.

I did trade shows. I mean, if you think about it, every Saturday and Sunday’s a trade show at the Market, The trade show element of it kind of spills over to the Market, too.

Those years were great to help to finance my family and help to do the things we needed to do. But as I got towards my later part of life, you know, in the mid-50s … I had known that I wanted to be with the cheese shop in the Market. That brings me around a little bit more.

COLLINS OFFNER: There's one particular story you wanted to make sure we didn't forget about in that involves your father, the Secret Service, the Carter Administration.

BOWERS: I was going to get into that. I forgot to. So during the Carter administration, one of my father's responsibilities was to help bring [Rehabilitation Act] compliance to the White House [by teaming up with Gallaudet University and Tim Medina of Channel 5 News]. The White House is actually run by the First Lady. She's the person [along with the Chief of Staff] who's responsible for the day-to-day operations of the of the White House. His job was directly tied to Rosalyn Carter, who he got to know pretty [well]. And during the course of that, he also got into the kitchen. [Our family was actually invited to a White House Christmas party on December 13, 1979. The Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs musical production had opened at Radio City Music Hall that year and some of the cast gave a special performance at the party. I have a picture of my sister and President Carter.]

[Later,] a gentleman by the name of Jeff Buben––who was recently [chef] at [restaurants] Vidalia and Occidental, but more recently has moved out of the Outer Banks of North Carolina[––owned restaurants in Washington that were popular with White House staff]. He and my father just developed a kinship. Jeff's father was FBI, dad Secret Service. That kind of mixed it up a little bit.

But Jeff introduced my father to Lewes Dairy [a dairy in Millsboro, Delaware] cream, and as a result of that, Lewes Dairy eggnog. And so we still carry those two products at the shop. And if you read on the back of the Lewes Dairy cream, it says, “From the Eastern Shore to the U.S. Capitol,” and I don't know where else around Washington you're going to get it. It is one of the better creams that you'll get for sure. It's Jersey cow. The farm, the dairy, the herd's over 100 years old, which is important. The age of herds is also something that's very meaningful as well.

I got to meet the principals throughout my life. Chip was one of the mainstays down at their shop at Lewes, which I went to. When I went there, it was an aging shop. It was probably built in the 1950s. They made a decision to move their operations to a creamery up in the Wilmington area called High Point and that's where it's operated out of today. But they’re still using, to my understanding, the same herd, same recipe of processing. Just a different location, a more modernized facility.

COLLINS OFFNER: Great. So, any interesting stories on the clientele that you have served over the years that may be gracing the Capitol or the White House or the Supreme Court?

BOWERS: So, I’ll screw up his name, but I was helping a gentleman … You might know from [Voice of America and the Carter Center, writer Gwen Dillard]. So Gwen and this gentleman were in front of me and I’m serving him, and he's a very gracious gentlemen. A week later, Gwen said, “Do you know who you were helping there?” I said, “No, he's very nice guy, but who was he?” She says, “That was John Thune.” The Senate majority leader [as of] just like five weeks ago. Recently.

So, yeah. You never know who you run into. And then, 2018 or so, a young senator comes up to us and she's with an assistant, and one of my employees was waiting on her, and he was so excited. Because I'm kind of a neophyte when it comes to political figures, he goes, “You know who that was? That was Kamala Harris!”  So for sure it was and he ended up writing an article that was in the Hill Rag about his experience with her and how much it meant to him. I totally appreciate that. [“A Cheesy Conversation With Senator Kamala Harris” by Hans Capozzi, Hill Rag, August 28, 2019.]

She became a fixture of the cheese shop. We’re so grateful to her for doing that. She would just come. As a senator it is a lot easier. But as Vice President, it was a little bit more challenging. You walk in and you got a whole entourage. You got to shut the building down and the whole thing. But she was very respectful of that too. She made one meeting with us towards the end of her vice presidency. But in between that, she'd send staff over and they’d pick up, or she has a really close friend who would call in and place an order. We were just so thankful for the business, greatly appreciated. She was a fantastic person to get to know.

And then, shoot, were there others? Yeah, we've seen a few Kennedys run around. Clinton's been in a few times. So we've had all sorts of people in politics who would come through, particularly. I'm sure there's some rock star along there as well, but they would come and patronize and, you know, sometimes we’d know who they were and sometimes we didn't. But they're still waiting in line like anybody else.

COLLINS OFFNER: [Laughs.] So, any interesting stories of the staff that have worked over the years?  You talked about Jack Cully, but any others? There's a name that has come up in interviews …

BOWERS: Well, another long-term fixture at the cheese shop was Tessa [Zajac Fine]. Tessa was Jack's sister-in-law and she came to us from Soviet Poland. So she had a whole different perspective on life, one that we got to understand and work with over the years. As a result, she worked for us for maybe 25 years. She just enjoyed the cheese shop and I think the community really just enjoyed working with her too.

COLLINS OFFNER: That's great. Before we leave the the cheese shop, what is your favorite cheese, local or international?

BOWERS: I’m often asked.  It’s going to be more of my favorite creamery, which is Meadow Creek Dairy down in Galax County, Virginia. Back around 2000, just when the internet was starting to come out, you know, the American Cheese Society came out. Maybe in the mid-90s. And American cheeses were kind of all the thing, particularly as you got into the artisanal batches. I tried a few and I was like impressed with some, but I was really looking for the one that I thought would be really great.

And so in a Wall Street Journal article, I read about Meadow Creek Dairy, and I called. I had to jump through hoops to get the number, but I ended up calling down to to Meadow Creek Dairy and Helen, and sure enough, she was able to ship me up some cheese to try out with our customers. We're probably the first in Washington to give taste of it. It certainly would have been up in New York at the time. [Their] Grayson's a wonderful cheese, a washed rind cheese, semi-soft. They make another cheese called Mountaineer. And if you like Tomme de Savoie, there's nothing wrong with Appalachian, which is an American style tomme that's fantastic. So I think those there are three mainstream cheeses. They've tried other little things as well, but those are the three big ones. And what I've learned, what I like about them, is they participate over in the slow food festival in Bra, Italy. And they represent, as do other creameries like Rogue and others, very well what the U.S. can offer in product.

And it shows somewhat of a return back to the old way of making product, making cheeses. These are all raw milk. That's an example of one of the cheeses that I think really showcases the new American cheese culture.

COLLINS OFFNER: So let's turn to some of the research that you've done on your own family history. As I mentioned at the at the top of the interview, you've have long ties to the D.C. area. And on both your father’s and your mother's side. So let me begin with your mother's side and maybe you can walk us through.

BOWERS: Okay. Let me give you a little bit of genesis on that too. I kind of am the collector of all of our family memorabilia, or artifacts. So I have a whole room full of stuff at home I just still have got to sift through. And so my understanding of my family's history and how it all integrates is still being developed.

I remember when I was working in the cheese shop, when they first started talking about D.C. statehood back in the 90s, I'd be working down there and somebody who just moved in from, say, New Jersey––not to pick on New Jersey––but would come in and say, “Well, where do you live?” I’d say, “Well, I live in Virginia.” He goes, “Well, you're not a Washingtonian.” And I’d say, “Well, I may not be living in Washington but I've always considered myself a Washingtonian and this is news to me.”

So as I got a little later in life, I started to learn about my family history and learn about my mom's side. We're starting there with the Wilcoxes and the Legges. I learned I had three great-grandfathers living in Washington in 1880s, so I think I can consider myself rightfully so a Washingtonian. And my grandfather, Harris, was born over in Hyattsville, which is just a stone’s throw away. Harrises were certainly Washingtonians too.

But the Legge family, we'll start there. So J.F. Legge, John Francis Henry Legge––he went also sometimes by the name of Hank or Frank––he came over. [He was my great-great-grandfather, the father of my great-grandmother, Mamie Legge Schrock.] He was born in 1847 [in Shropshire, UK] and came over to Frostburg, Maryland, in 1849. And so being raised out there by his father, he found himself fighting the Civil War at the age of 15. And he was with the Maryland Third Brigade [3rd PHB Maryland Infantry Company D and later I].

Their main responsibility was to guard the B&O Railroad during the war. And so on August 15th, 1862, he found himself in the Battle of Harper's Ferry. He was not down in the garrison guarding the armory, but he was on an ancillary troop. And as people [who know] Civil War history know, that didn't go well for the Union Army, and 13,000 troops, with my great-great grandfather included, were taken captive.

That wasn't his start. He fought many battles before that as a musician. He was a musician. He would be up front giving the troop signals which way to go. Had he not been captured, you know, I guess by the grace of God, he would have fought over at Antietam two days later and that probably wouldn't have gone well.

So that's his start to becoming an American and working through the Civil War [he mustered out in May 1865, after also taking part in the Battle of Monocacy, known as “the battle that saved Washington”]. After [that] his first assignment with a railroad was down at Parkersburg, where he was a telegraph officer. And so I thought that was kind of cool that we were part of the very early age of telecommunication and he would learn Morse code and that's what Abraham Lincoln [used] to communicate during the war. So I thought that was a very important element of his role.

And then subsequent to that, he went back to his hometown in Frostburg, Maryland–– actually, Cumberland––close by, and he was, I guess, more or less responsible for the offices there at the station. I think somewhere along the line he must have gotten his law degree, too.

A widow from the war would drop off her son, his last name was Galloway, and he would be like Daddy daycare and just kind of look after the young man while the widow took her produce to market to help create income for the family. I thought that was kind of an admirable trait of his that he would help other people out so that they could, you know, continue to thrive and live. Probably the time was a very difficult time.

And so then I think one next stop was probably up around New York. I don't know that that's quite it, but it's still with the B&O Railroad. He was a conductor at one point. But around 1888 or so, he found himself here in Washington, where he was the general manager, the terminal agent, responsible for all the freight and passenger lines coming into Washington, D.C. So that was around 1888,1889.

COLLINS OFFNER: Would that have been at Union Station?

BOWERS:  No, no, Union Station wasn't put into commission until 1907. From what I remember reading, he may have testified to Congress that the B&O Railroad would be willing to give $5 million to the creation of Union station. So that could have been the start of it.

But his focus was to maintain the operating of the old station, and so he did. He died in November of 1907, just a month or two after Union Station opened up. So it's kind of cool that he probably saw the completion of all this and started the transfer over. And oh, by the way, the young man Galloway took on some of his roles after his departure.

And I remember reading he was buried in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, my mom's hometown. Six of the oldest porters carried his casket through Union Station to be placed on a train to be taken back to his place of interment. Yeah, so he was a very meaningful part of the B&O Railroad and perhaps part of the creation of the Union Station.

I’m still researching how, you know, he may have fit into all that, but I do know that in one of the parades, he was on the review stand with Teddy Roosevelt. So I think [he was] somewhere around the New York area as a conductor. If not, through his son Clement [Legge], he got to know the President. Because Clement was in the same …
I think Clement didn't serve with Theodore Roosevelt at San Juan Hill, but was in the same regiment just a year or two after. So there's some similarities there wanting to be researched. So there's something I need to look into. [Legge also belonged to the Grace Reform Church in Northwest Washington, which Roosevelt also attended. His Capitol Hill address was B Street, where a Senate office building now stands.]

So then the Wilcox [family] is an interesting family. The Wilcoxes came down through, originally, Rhode Island, but then settled in western New York. And Chauncey Wilcox had a dairy farm. He would actually have fought with the Union side. After the war, he actually had a cheese business. So that was something I found in my research, the Orangeville cheese factory. He kept the business going for about ten years, sold it in 1876 when he was older. Sold it making 100,000 pounds of cheese a year, so that's not a small little operation.

And then his son [my great-great grandfather], I think his name's Bueller Wilcox––I have to look that up––came down to Washington, D.C., in the 1880s and he was a mason. He helped to build some of these houses around Washington, built some of the buildings. He was a concrete mason. His name wasn't Bueller––it was Thomas [Buell] Wilcox. He was here through 1929. He lived over in Northwest.

Then the Wilcox line also married into the Knodes. The Knodes from the early 1800s was a longstanding family [in] Bridgeport, Maryland, but if you look on the map, you’ll probably hardly find Bridgeport, Maryland, these days. What it is is the ford that goes in between Shepherdstown, West Virginia, over on the other side of the river, which was Bridgeport. And it's where a lock 38 of the C&O Canal was. They did not run the C&O lock, but they maintained a general store there for many years. Early 1800s to the 1930s, when they were washed out by flood.

And so they then later, with railroad, brought their business up into Shepherdstown itself along the rail, where they ran a Southern States [farmers cooperative] there on the panhandle for many years. And obviously, when you to run a Southern States, you get to know all the farmers. So that was the a little bit of the farming business.

COLLINS OFFNER: I neglected to ask you your mother's maiden name.

BOWERS: My mother's maid name is Knode, yeah. K-N-O-D-E.

COLLINS OFFNER: So the Legges, the Knodes, and the Wilcoxes.

BOWERS: Yeah, the Reynolds were another part of them. The Reynolds were actually half relatives. The ones that were the Bantz out of Frederick, Maryland, were the
ones that J.F. Legge married and that's my lineage.

Theodora Bantz passed away at the age of 30 from malaria. She had four children who, my great grandfather, J.F. Legge, couldn't raise by himself and be in the railroad business, so they were all raised out in Aurora, West Virginia, by his brother, who was more or less a doctor who ran a facility out there.

So it's a lot of lines of that family tree, for sure. So then that leads to my namesake, Bowers. The Bowers came over, I'd say, from Darmstadt Germany.  Probably some Bavarian heritage there too. We settled over in Garrett County, Maryland. We're buried at Saint John's Catholic Church out there.

Aquila was the older of the group, he came with his son Sebastian. And so around, I guess, the 1860s, they moved to Washington, D.C., where Sebastian used his skills as a farmer. They were farmers out on the western Maryland part. He used his skills to be a blacksmith.

So at the turn of the century, we had two business licenses here in Washington, D.C. as blacksmiths. One was over in Georgetown, another one up in Northwest.

COLLINS OFFNER: I'm not sure pronouncing this correctly …

BOWERS: The Keblaitis [family, pronounced with a long I]. Nobody ever gets that name right so don’t feel alone.

That's my father's mother’s family. Her family came over from Vilnius, Lithuania, and they settled in Thomas, West Virginia, which is actually Blackwater Falls, a beautiful town to go visit these days, very artisanal. They have a glass factory out there, very  artisanal. Her name is Zelma Bowers, Z-E-L-M-A, and that was her mother's name too. I think that basically roughly translates to Sarah. So at the age of 20––she was born here in the U.S.––she decided Thomas, West Virginia, was too small for her.

COLLINS OFFNER: [Laughs.] Lucky for you.

BOWERS: Yeah. She came at the age of 18, which was around 1928 or so, just before the Depression, and she put herself into nursing school. Now, I'm sure I don't know exactly what the arrangements for college were back then. I'm sure she didn't have a lot of money, but I'm sure part of that would be that …

COLLINS OFFNER: She had to work.

BOWERS: Yeah, right. So that's what she did. And she came with a friend, her girlfriend Martha. And soon met my grandfather and they got married. My dad was born in 1934. So that's soon after. I always describe her as the brains of the family. She lived to 103 which is 2013, and she outlived both her kids, her husband. Set her herself up as an Arlington County health official with 30, 40 years of service to the community. Also worked during World War II as a nurse and all the hospitals there too. Her speciality was pulmonary care. So she also worked with my grandfather's grocery stores too. She was the bookkeeper and watching every penny he was working on. So she did a lot of different things, a lot of different hats. She was smart as a whip and and she knew how to take care of herself. Her diet was she would have one source of meat each day. One day is pork, one day is beef, one day is fish. She’d always have two different vegetables on her plate and her ideology was micronutrition.

COLLINS OFFNER: [Living to 103] bore it out.

BOWERS: She knew how to do it, yeah. So she took care of herself and took care of her family and she definitely was a godsend. But just to think, coming from a coal mining town, that's what her father was. Her father only lived to be 60 years old with everything going on there. But, you know, coming from a coal mining town and knowing how to get out at a young age was smart and the rest of her family eventually made their way out of Thomas and went up to Michigan, where they worked in the automobile industry as engineers and other things as well.

COLLINS OFFNER: There we go. We're back on track. So I was going to ask you, she did her training in Providence. We probably think it's Providence [Hospital] that was once on Capitol Hill?

BOWERS: Yeah, I think it was around Saint Peter's. I believe that to be the case. Right. Yeah, I have a picture of her in front of some building. I was trying to figure it out, but my cousins chimed in. They said it was Providence in Georgetown.

COLLINS OFFNER: If you look at the historical records, you would not believe that there was a a pretty large hospital in that space [Providence Park] that is now just a series of parks.

BOWERS: Right, well I guess she kind of knew the neighborhood then. Who knows? She was in thick of it for sure. They had their house out in Arlington, Virginia. They bought it soon after my father was born, I guess, maybe a little bit later, maybe late 1930s. I think she paid $5,000 dollars for it, is what she said. It was little, it was actually a two bedroom house with two more bedrooms put upstairs when they needed them.

COLLINS OFFNER: So, anything more on the family history that you’d like to make sure we cover?

BOWERS: No, I think I’ve got a lot more research to do. I think with the 250th anniversary, I think we have some Revolutionary War folks we need to look into a little bit. But that's a different time, different lineage, and some interesting things. I think one of them answered the alarm at Lexington, so I'm looking into that.

COLLINS OFFNER: Fascinating. So as we close out this conversation, I thought I we would end on a question about what the future holds for the Bowers cheese shop and …

BOWERS: Well, I’m going to live forever. [Laughs.]

COLLINS OFFNER: You’ve got good genes.

BOWERS:  Well, you know, my plan is to continue to operate the business and we have some challenging times coming up for the Market with the restoration of Rumsey [Aquatic Center next to the Market] and some other projects that will be coming in.

I think I'd like to explore the products with my customers to see what’s new and interesting and what we can provide them. My son [Ryan Bowers] worked at the cheese shop from the age of 14 to 21, so he has a good seven year stint there. He's expressed some interested in carrying it on, but I don't think it'd be where he's down there all the time.

COLLINS OFFNER: Manage it.

BOWERS: And he’s right. At his very young age, he is still developing his career in consulting and finance. And I really respect that.

COLLINS OFFNER: So it looks like we're in for another 60 years.

BOWERS: Yeah, that would be quite the accomplishment.

COLLINS OFFNER:  That would be.

BOWERS: I'm hoping to get this to at least 75 if not 80.

COLLINS OFFNER: Well that's a great note to end on.

BOWERS: There you go. We’ll see where it goes.

COLLINS OFFNER: Well, thank you so much.

BOWERS: You’re quite welcome. Thank you, Molly.

END OF INTERVIEW

Ruth Ann Overbeck Capitol Hill History Project
Michael Bowers Interview, February 25, 2025

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