David Lowell, part of the namesake of the University of Arizona's Lowell-Stevens Football Facility, has died. He was 92.
A 1945 graduate of Tucson High School and 1949 UA graduate, Lowell was a world renowned exploration geologist who worked for more than 100 companies in a dozen countries, largely in copper and gold mining.
Lowell was a letterman on the UA rifle team in the mid 1940s, and was a season-ticket holder at UA basketball games at McKale Center for most of the Lute Olson years, and periodically has sat on the front row at McKale Center the last few seasons.
He and his wife Edith Sykes Lowell, a 1944 graduate of Tucson High, donated more millions of dollars to the UA to honor his late brother Bill Lowell, a 1942 UA football letterman. A member of the U.S. Marine Corps, Bill Lowell died in the battle of Iwo Jima during World War II.
In 2013, David Lowell donated $11 million to the school’s athletic department to help build the Lowell-Stevens football plant. He earlier donated $2.5 million for construction of the Richard Jefferson Gymnasium, a practice facility for UA basketball and volleyball.
He also donated money to the UA in his brother’s name to establish scholarships in the field of economic geology. After retiring to Southern Arizona about 10 years ago, Lowell and his wife lived in a ranch west of Rio Rico.
