It was probably within two weeks after the 1960/61 school year had began that Mr. Lowcock first spotted me playing football on the field. I was a new boy and a boarder, attending Form 2D. As I was walking up the concrete stairs facing the field, Mr. Lowcock asked for my name and where I had come from. I told him that I had transferred from Wah Yan HK and when he asked me why I left there, I did not reveal to him that I had been invited by Wah Yan to leave. Instead I had made up some excuses. It was only in recent years when I read Mr. William Smyly’s transcript of his interview with Mr. Lowcock that I learned that Mr. Lowcock had very close association with Kowloon Wah Yan and the Jesuits ( S.J . for Society of Jesuits and these were also Mr. Lowcock’s initials ). He had even spent a year at Kowloon Wah Yan helping to set up their laboratories. I am certain that Mr. Lowcock had checked me out but he never brought up this subject again.
When Mr. Lowcock became headmaster in 1961/62, I was in his From 3C physics class. To this day, I am still in posession of the Black DBS Lab book containing his comments in the margins. That year, while I had never been exposed to field events,. Mr. Lowcock had encouraged me to toy with the discus and the javelin and in due course, I became a member of the B grade School Athletics team. A year later, when I was in Form 4B, I was the treasurer of the Intermediate choir under Mr. Kiang and one day, an envelop bearing my name was delivered to me. It was a note from Mr. Lowcock saying that while I may have many good reasons, he asked me not to miss anymore choir practices. ( I still have the note )
When boarders had to stay in school on some weekends, it was Mr. Lowcock who had invited me to go over to his house and asked me to do oil painting with him. He was most generous with his time, patience, boards, equipment and paints. I admire this man for he had introduced the arts, music, competitive sports and that learning is not confined to the classroom, laboratories or textbooks.
After I finished Form 5 and went back to DBS for the School Leaving Certificate results, at the time I had already been accepted by a Canadian University for a B.Sc. Course. Mr. Lowcock had invited me to return for From 6. When I told him that I shall embark on a science degree in Canada, he bluntly told me that I should not go for science. Instead, he suggested that I should consider selling Japanese dolls as a future career. Mr. Lowcock sure had a talent in spotting the personalities of his students.
Thank you Jimmy, for introducing the Charleston dance, the Peter Gunn music and jazz, the peanut characters, the mustache, the oil painting lessons, and that it is alright to be a non-conformist.
Steven Chow ’64
Boarder Prefect – 1963-64
DSOBA General Committee Member – 1981-96
DBS Fund Raising Committee Member
P.s. After completing my B.Sc. ( Biology ), I switched course for an MBA and a PhD ( economics )
