William Edgar Lowery

William Edgar Lowery passed away peacefully in Moraga, California on March 31, 2024, two and a half years after Sally, his adored wife of 67 years.

Bill is survived by his four sons, Bill (Laurie), Bob (Vicki), Michael (Mary) and John “J.P.” (Priscilla); daughter-in-law Elizabeth Lowery; 13 grandchildren, Gavin, Conor, and Brenna; Joe, Katie, Sarah, and Kristen; Brady, Colby and Molly; Liam, Aidan and Rowan; and two great-grandchildren, Josie and Luke. He is predeceased by his sister Marlene Wood, parents Harold and Winifred Lowery, and his wife, Sally.

Bill was born on November 17, 1931, in El Paso, Texas, to Harold “Pops” and Winifred “Mimi” Lowery. The family moved to Modesto, California in 1938 where Bill spent his formative years, much of it working, skiing, and camping in the mountains around Yosemite.  Bill graduated from Modesto High School in June 1949, attended Modesto Junior College and the California Maritime Academy at Vallejo, and earned a master’s degree in chemistry from the University of the Pacific in Stockton. He married Sally Diefenderfer on October 3, 1954, in La Grange, California. He and Sally started their family in Modesto soon after Bill completed his service in the U.S. Army. 

In 1960, after spending a few years working for Gallo and Dow Chemical, and fueled by his restless energy and creativity, Bill started his first business, Thermal Engineering, where he pioneered the design and manufacturing of insulated building panels. He never looked back, becoming a highly successful serial entrepreneur by developing new formulations and applications for urethane foam, including the aerosol cans of insulating foam found at any hardware or building supply store, which he called ‘pucky’ but now known by more marketable names such as ‘Great Stuff’.  

In 1963, at the urging of Modesto friends, Ed Rotticci and Jack Favors, Bill moved the family from southern California to Orinda, where he and Sally settled for good. They raised their four boys amongst a group of wonderful friends who shared their love of the outdoors and their commitment to a life lived to the fullest. 

When Bill wasn’t working on one of his businesses, he was invariably busy with a home project or an outdoor adventure with family and friends. Skiing was his first love, and his regular winter routine was to arrive home on Friday afternoon from Dallas or Cleveland, or wherever his current startup was based, with strict orders that the car be packed and ready to go, drive up to Tahoe for a weekend of skiing, then get on a plane again Monday morning to return to work. He also loved to fish, whether for the elusive striped bass in the Carquinez Strait, or, with more success, for trout in Sierra lakes and streams. In the summer, between construction projects around the house, he would join Sally and the boys at their beach house in Monterey, where he would participate vigorously in beach football games and excitedly muster his reluctant crew to man the Cal 20 whenever the small craft advisory flag was raised. And every summer, he led us, along with assorted friends and relatives, on logistically complex pack trips in the Sierras; on one occasion, taking a group of 22 people and a dozen mules more than 25 miles into the wilderness for a week.  He was not only a great wilderness cook but could also hold the entire group rapt around the campfire with his almost convincing stories of bigfoot. 

In his later years, Bill was a loving grandfather to his growing flock of grandchildren, who would gather en masse each summer at the mountain home in Graeagle to hike, swim and golf in the beautiful Lakes Basin area and delight in their Grandpa’s tenderness as well as his ribald humor. He and Sally also spent time at their home in Hawaii, where he shared his passion for golf with his sons and friends. He continued to ski with his sons and grandchildren well into his seventies, and his business legacy was passed to his sons, Bill and Michael, and then to his grandsons.  

Bill was a valley boy with dreams to match the mountains that he roamed. He accomplished a great deal in his life, and like a true patriarch, he was driven by his love of his family and the desire to give them every opportunity to achieve dreams of their own.