Now that his time as Christ Episcopal Church’s rector has passed, David Lowry is moving to New Orleans to begin his retirement.
But he may not stay in the Bayou for very long.
That’s because Lowry, 67, plans to return to his work with Freeport-McMoRan, one of the largest mining companies in North America.
From 1990-2004, Lowry served as the company’s vice president for international community relations and development, helping to improve the relationship between the governments of developing nations and the people whose mineral-rich land would be used for extraction.
Lowry’s possible destinations? The South Sudan and Burma, he said.
“It’s the Thelma and Louise of old men but we’ve worked a lot of our lives in these areas from a corporate perspective, and now we want to look at them from a community perspective,” Lowry said.
Growing up in Westchester County, Lowry said he never traveled out of the United States until he met his wife Mary, who grew up in India as the daughter of missionaries. The couple recently celebrated their 43rd wedding anniversary.
“It opened up a world for me that I didn’t have in my childhood,” Lowry said. “I do the traveling to the dangerous areas and whatnot, and she’s an accountant. She accounts for me.”
Lowry first moved to Manahsset to start his work with Christ Episcopal in 1971, before he was officially ordained a priest.
In 1975, he moved to Bloomington, Ind., where he earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. in history.
Lowry then bounced around parishes in Indianapolis and Garden City before moving to New Orleans in 1986 to start his work with Freeport. In 2004, he returned to Christ Episcopal.
Lowry became involved with Freeport in 1990, after officiating a wedding for the company’s former Chief Executive Officer James Robert Moffett, now the company’s chairman, who expressed interest in hiring the priest after the two met for a number of business lunches.
“I didn’t want to get to the age I am now and look back on something I never did,” Lowry said. “I’ve had wonderful experiences. Few people get to have the experiences that I’ve had.”
Lowry and his team served as the liaison between the governments of nations with rich mineral resources and the people who lived near extraction sites. Lowry’s team would build hospitals, roads and schools as compensation for the extraction, while helping to improve the image of the often oppressive regimes in the minds of locals.
“The problem with developing areas when they’re sitting on [mineral mines] is people don’t consult them, so they get all the social and environmental problems [that come with extraction] but none of the benefits,” Lowry said.
During his first stint with Freeport, Lowry estimated he traveled 250,000 miles per year.
In 1996, Lowry said he traveled around the world approximately seven times, flying to different conflict areas to aid communities as governments extracted resources from nearby mines.
Lowry said the 1995 execution of Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa by government officials complicated his work, as the event exploded worldwide on the Web and caused a backlash from rebel groups who began attacking extraction sites with increased frequency.
Lowry and his associates were not permitted to carry weapons at the work sites, leaving them more vulnerable to attacks. For protection, they would often partner with the same militaries that made their interaction with local townspeople necessary in the first place.
In West Papua, New Guinea, where much of Lowry’s work during that time took place, Freeport officials helped build the only tuberculosis treatment facility within 1,000 miles.
Lowry said the clinic was among the only available resources for medical care, leading people from all over the region to move in with the sick so they could develop the illness and receive treatment for a variety of ailments.
“Sometimes your best intentions can cause huge and unintended negative consequences,” Lowry said. “We didn’t always do the best that could be done, but we always tried to do the best that could be done.”
While living in these areas, Lowry continued to serve as a priest by hosting services for a variety of Christian denominations and even other religions. In particular, he said he had presided over a large number of Muslim funerals.
“I’ve never thought it was a conflict,” Lowry said. “I’ve tried to wear my faith very straightforwardly in how I interact with people.”
Lowry said the South Sudan has a large Christian population, while many Burmese are Buddhists.
He’s going to serve them, spiritually and in the community, just the same.
“The issues are all the same, it’s a matter of what side you start on,” Lowry said.
