“Welcome to the conversation,” Lawrence Stagner Owen announced many times to the incoming class at Gustavus Adolphus College, in St. Peter, Minnesota. Though he died in the morning of August 26, in Santa Monica, California, family, friends, and hundreds of students will continue the conversation.

Owen was born on February 1, 1932, the ninth of ten children and the seventh son. He graduated from Hardin Simmons College in Abilene, Texas, in 1954, having fallen under the spell of a professor of English. After graduation he was drafted into the United States Army and served for two years, keeping us safe from the communists, as he liked to joke. While serving in Germany, he was awarded the Engineering Prize, which included a Zippo lighter, a Parker ink pen, and a three-day leave. He went to Strasbourg.

He attended one semester at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, met Kathleen Celeste Huber, and promptly married her. Together they lived in Wyoming, Texas, and Kansas, enlarging their family with three unruly though loving children. Before he could finish his Ph.D. at the University of Kansas, he was hired to teach English at Gustavus. 

He influenced many students, a number of whom remained lifelong friends. His learning, passion for the liberal arts, and steely leadership influenced his colleagues. In 1972, Owen was the second recipient of the Edgar M. Carlson Award for outstanding teaching. Upon his retirement, in 1997, a group of faculty created the Lawrence Owen awards for creative writing. Among his students were Bill Holm, essayist and poet, John Wirth, Hollywood writer, and Philip Bryant, poet and, now, professor emeritus of GAC.

He and Kathleen were renowned for throwing great parties, fêting visiting writers at their home and on campus, and cooking memorable meals for large groups of people. Together they built a harpsichord, remodeled a house on Minnesota Avenue, and participated in community theater as actors, directors, and board members.

Upon retirement, he and Kathleen moved to Hot Springs Village, Arkansas, where he pursued his love of golf and spent quality time with nephews. In 2003, they moved to Morris, Minnesota, and in 2008 they celebrated 50 years of marriage surrounded by friends and family. Less than a year later Kathleen died peacefully in Fort Worth, Texas, where they spent winters admiring art and listening to Glen Gould piano finalists.

One key moment in his life was in 1982 when he got sober. One day at a time. Another was when, at 77 years of age, he played the lead in “On Golden Pond.”

In November, 2012, Owen married Cheryl Downey. Owen and Downey met years before when, as a new teacher, he was assigned Downey as a TA. Owen and Downey embarked on a fulfilling life together in Santa Monica, CA. Together they traveled, attended theater, movies, and opera, read aloud to one another, and threw parties at holidays, the Oscars, birthdays, and anniversaries. 

All his life, Owen was an avid traveler—to Mexico in 1969 and to Australia for the year 1977 with his family, for two semesters with Kathleen in Exeter, England, and one in Hawaii, and with Cheryl to Peru and the Galapagos and elsewhere. In the summer of 2023 they drove over 4000 miles to participate in Word Play at Gustavus, visit friends, and attend the Santa Fe Opera.

Owen wrote many published short stories and essays and was an avid letter writer. He was a fierce competitor and loved to beat anyone at bridge, Oh Hell, chess, cribbage, poker, or any other game requiring wit and strategy. During his years in Santa Monica he played kriegsspiel every Wednesday night with a diverse group of men. He was a creative maker and taught his children woodworking and furniture restoration. He cooked and baked and gardened, and in retirement, took up sewing.

In retirement he also continued teaching, offering classes in writing memoir to people in libraries, churches, and other venues in Minnesota and California.

He spent many hours fishing, which often meant a day of fine-tuning the boat motor. Once to the delight of no one, he dispatched his catch of the day by making spaghetti and carp balls. As a joke, he bet one of his children a pie. He lost, but the idea was so delicious, he lost and won pies with family and friends for over four decades.

He loved opera and classical music, Tom Waits and Bette Midler, hymns sung by family, and live concerts, which he attended in many places around Europe, Australia, and the United States.

Perhaps above all, Lawrence Owen was a reader and thinker. He taught Johnson and Milton and Whitman and O’Connor, and as he lay dying his family read to him Dickinson and Hopkins and Faulkner and Wordsworth. Conversation always ensued.

In life he was an exuberant teacher; his body will be a “silent teacher” to a medical student at the Loma Linda Teaching Hospital.

He is survived by Cheryl Downey, of Santa Monica, CA; children Athena Owen Kildegaard (Arne) of Farwell, MN; Ashley Van Nedeau-Owen (Laura) of Lodi, WI; Beatrice Owen of St. Paul, MN; step-daughter Ariel Bandasch of Santa Monica; a brother, two sisters-in-law, numerous nieces and nephews.

A memorial will be held in California in late September and another in St. Peter in the spring of 2025.

Memorials preferred to Gustavus Adolphus College, memo line: Owen Writing Prize, 800 West College Avenue, St. Peter, Minnesota 56082.