Stars honor officers who died on duty; 1919 death was previously omitted
By Bert Etling, Ashland.news
A fourth name will be added to the list of Ashland Police Department officers who have died while on duty.
Officer George Martin Lowe, 54, was struck and killed by a train while on foot patrol in the Ashland Railroad District on March 3, 1919, according to a release issued Monday by the department, which said it just learned of the omission from its list. The fatality was recently brought to the department’s attention by the Officer Collin Rose Memorial Foundation, a Michigan based nonprofit that works to honor officers who have fallen in the line of duty.
Officer Lowe was on duty patrolling the area by the Ashland train depot when he was struck from behind by a passenger train pulling into the station at 12:20 a.m.
“It is supposed that Mr. Lowe was standing near the main track, thinking that the train would come up to the station on the track nearest the building,” according to an Ashland Tidings report published March 4, 1919. “On the contrary, the train was sent in on the second track.”
Sheriff Terrill and two deputies were at the station and immediately went to where Lowe was found. “Death was instantaneous,” the Tidings reported.
“He was a popular man among his business associates and was well known by a large number of acquaintances,” the Tidings said, adding that he was survived by his wife, two daughters and three sons.
“One of the largest concourses that ever went out of Ashland followed the body to its last resting place” in the Stearns cemetery near Talent, the Tidings said of the March 9, 1919, funeral.
Ashland Mayor C.B. Lamkin delivered an eulogy, saying “When I appointed Mr. Lowe policeman, he said to me: ‘Mr. Lamkin, I will give you a square deal,’” the Tidings reported. “‘If I ever show any favors, it will be to the poor and unfortunate.’ He kept this promise to the letter.
“G.M. Lowe was a faithful, honest, earnest, capable and efficient police officer. … In the passing of G.M. Lowe the city of Ashland loses a worthy and trusted citizen and officer and one whose place it will be hard to fill.”
The Ashland Police Department has requested that Officer Lowe’s name be added to the National Law Enforcement Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., a request that has been approved. Officer Lowe’s name will be added during a ceremony in May.
APD has also requested that his name be added to the state’s wall of honor in Salem (at the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training), and the county’s wall of honor at Singler Memorial Plaza in Medford (between the Jackson County Circuit Court and the Jackson County Jail).
The department is in the process of updating its badge as well. The bottom of the Ashland police badge contains a panel with stars, one star for each officer who has died in the line of duty. A fourth star will be added for Officer Lowe, joining three other stars honoring Samuel Prescott and Victor Knott, both of whom died in the line of duty in 1931, and Malcus Williams, who died in the line of duty in 2018. Officers Prescott and Knott died in separate shootings in 1931, according to a prior report by The Oregonian. Officer Williams suffered a major medical event while on duty in 2018, according to the Ashland Police Department.
Email Ashland.news Executive Editor Bert Etling at [email protected] or call or text him at 541-631-1313.
