Lowana Prochazka

Longtime Rawlins County resident Lowana Mae Prochazka died Sunday, July 16, 2017, at TRU Community Care hospice in Boulder, Co.

Lowana was born Jan. 3, 1928, in Salina, Kan., to Roy D. and Stella F. Stephen. She grew up on a farm near Kipp, Kan., riding horses, playing near the creek and developing a lifelong loathing of snakes, after seeing one too many while gathering food from the cellar.A tornado hit Kipp when she was a girl, and she remembered the breathless feeling of her horse refusing to move when she tried to spur it to carry her home. Her father served as Saline County sheriff when she was a toddler. Lowana remembered a prisoner trying to grab her through the bars. Another carved a birthday plaque for the child.

She attended school in Kipp, performing in a high school play, studying piano and graduating from Kipp High School in 1945. She then graduated in 1948 from Salina’s St. John’s Hospital Nursing School, where she studied obstetrics under Dr. Leo Schaffer, who had delivered her when she was born. Lowana worked at a hospital in Hays until her father grew ill. She returned home and eventually helped her mother settle in a house in Salina. She took a job at the McCook, Neb., hospital after becoming smitten with an Atwood, Kan., boy she met on a blind date in Salina.

“Oh yeah,” she thought he was cute, she recalled after nearly 65 years of marriage to Joe W. Prochazka. “I came out there all dressed up, wearing spike heels.” After a courtship, the couple was married Oct. 12, 1950, at Sts. Cyril & Methodius Church, northwest of Atwood. Following a month-long honeymoon driving through the southeastern U.S. and visiting Cuba, they returned to their farm in Rawlins County, living with Joe’s parents for months. Later, their love of travel would take them on farm tours in the Scandinavian countries, to Ireland, England and Germany. They visited Alaska, Canada and Mexico, and came to love the desert southwest, spending winters in Tucson, Ariz.

Lowana was a homemaker, farm wife, an excellent cook, baker, seamstress and gardener. She made many of the children’s clothes and created banners for Sts. Cyril & Methodius Church, which her father-in-law helped build. Her children grew up to the smells and tastes of rollicks and kolaches, especially poppyseed, which family members would fight over.A creative woman who also crocheted and loved crafts, Lowana even managed to make a pineapple upside-down cake on an outdoor grill when a snowstorm cut electricity to the farm for days.

Gardening filled her family’s tummies and her spirit, as vegetables and fruits galore were harvested. A tractor tire became a raised garden to show off fragrant iris, and an English-style hedged garden was home to roses, tiger lilies and any beautiful flower she became smitten with. Poetry was as dear to her as it had been to her mother and her recipe boxes always included poetry sections, as well as poems taped inside kitchen cabinet doors. Lowana had a big heart and a special place in it for those who seemed left out by others.

Lowana was a regular election worker for Rawlins County. She also had served as president of the Diocesan Council of Catholic Women, president of the Kansas Wheathearts and of the Driftwood Extension Homemakers Club.

Survivors include her children, Kathy Ross and husband, Scott, of Stockton, Larry, of Longmont, Mary Jo Prochazka, of Longmont and Kelly Presnell, of Tucson, Ariz., and Bill and wife, Jeannette, of Saratoga Springs, Utah; two grandchildren, Jessica (Ross) Graus and husband, Brian, of Longmont, and Seth Ross and wife Edie, of Hutchinson; four great-grandchildren, Ryle, Elias and Knox Ross, of Hutchinson and Oliver Graus, of Longmont; a sister-in-law, Julia Stephen, of New Jersey and Florida; and numerous nieces and nephews, friends and other relatives.

She was preceded in death by her husband, Joseph, in 2015; her parents; her sister, Geraldine Brownlee; and her brothers, Gerald and John Stephen.

Visitation will be from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday, July 21, 2017 at Baalmann Mortuary, Atwood, with a Vigil at 7:00 p.m. The Funeral Mass will be at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, July 22, at Sacred Heart Church in Atwood with Rev. Gnanasekar officiating. Burial will follow in Mount Calvary Cemetery, Atwood. Memorials may be made to Capuchin Franciscans Mid-America Province, 3613 Wyandot St., Denver, CO 80211. For condolences or information visit www.baalmannmortuary.com