Sincere, Charismatic, and Adventurous, Bower Will Be Dearly Missed By All Who Knew Her
By Isabelle Mascary | Assistant Editor
Megan Bower was an Automotive Technician student at the Mount who unexpectedly passed away on September 22. Born and raised in Littleton, Massachusetts, she was passionate about her dreams, family, friends, and, most importantly, helping others. She had a major impact on those she met. Although she has passed on, there is something we all can learn from her story. She was not just another young woman that passed away from an unfortunate accident, she was a beam of light, gone too soon, but her story will live on and help the lives of others, just as she lived.
Megan loved to travel. Alongside her recent boyfriend, “They were all over the map and traveling to Canada,” her mother Anne Bower shared. “She went around the US by herself.”
In 2021, Megan took three weeks off and bought herself a Prius because it was fuel efficient, and she was able to plug in her electric lunch box while driving herself around the country. “It totally freaked me out as a mother when your daughter wants to do something like this,” Anne said. But being the explorer and adventurer that she was, “she did it.” When she was not working on a vehicle, her hobbies included surfing, rock climbing, riding her motorcycle, and also taking care of her two cats.
“Megan always had an outdoor voice,” her mother shared. “You cannot take her anywhere and think you’re going to have a normal tone inside a restaurant,” Anne Bower chuckled.
If they were going shopping, she would have to remind Megan to take her delivery down a notch. “She was just so out there and had this zest for life and had to make her voice be known,” Anne Bower said. Reminiscing on the time they took a weekend trip to Vermont last year, she said, “When you chatted with her, she was a motor mouth a mile a minute.” Anne Bower laughed, “She was just so excited in her personality.”
Megan not only dreamed big, but she was determined and goal-oriented. “She recently looked at a piece of land a month before she passed,” her mother shared. This land is located in Gardner, and she wanted to build a tiny house on it.
“She had saved quite a bit of money to accomplish this and actually put in an offer on this piece of land,” her mother recalled. “The land was about $65,000, and she had $50,000 in the bank.” Not wanting to put all of her savings into the land, she offered $47,000.
Despite not getting the land, this is an example of her determination and dreams. “She just had big dreams and didn’t think anybody would stop her,” her mother shared. “That was her mantra.”
Recalling a funny pastime, her mother shared the time when she walked through a glass door. “It was a moment when she was living with a boyfriend a year and a half ago,” she began. “She was so in the moment that there was a glass door that she thought was open.” She continued with laughter, “She walked right into it. She was too busy to really look at the glass. Everyone was laughing.”
Megan was always late everywhere that she went but got better with time. “At Christmas time, we would always wait a little while longer for Megan to finally come around,” her mother shared. “It was notorious for her to be late wherever she went.” She laughed and continued, “She had no sense of time and showed up whenever the wind blew her in.”
Megan’s classmate Brian Roach shared that she was an organ donor and was able to help save the lives of three people. “She was the most amazing person I’ve ever met,” he added. Brian is a student that she befriended.
According to Automotive Department Head Eric Almeida, who had Megan as a student for two years, “When Brian began [the automotive program], he was very nervous about being in this type of environment.” He continued, “Megan took him under her wing, and they became really good friends.” After she passed, Megan’s mother actually gifted Megan’s tools to Brian.
Megan made helping people a passion, and it is a skill that occurred naturally for her. She wore her kindness on her sleeve. Almeida described her as being an advocate for females in the industry, and her attitude was, “If you can do it, I can do it too.”
Almeida shared a time when Megan went above and beyond for another student whom she had just met. “Megan was always helpful, always happy, and always smiling.” He shared, “I had actually just met Megan, and she had only been in class for two days, and at that time, I didn’t fully know her name yet.”
He continued, “We had a student that came in who struggled with English. He was an ESL student. He was not on any of my class rosters; he just showed up.” He added, “I asked him if he registered for class and did you go through financial aid and the student just simply said no, he just came to class.”
After trying to explain to the student how financial aid works, Megan was listening from a distance, and she came over and stated, “I got this.” Megan pulled the student to the side and explained the process of financial aid, but he still did not understand. “He did not have a car or license either,” Almeida added. “So she gave him a ride to the school towards the main campus, walked him over to financial aid, filled out the paperwork for him, and got him registered.”
Without knowing who he was or knowing anything about him, she was able to help this student without hesitation. “That’s just the type of person she was,” he shared.
After she started the program here, she moved to Gardner to be closer. She was in the program for two years. Dean of the School of Business, Science, and Technology Veronica Guay indicated she [Megan] didn’t want to leave. “She was taking her time,” Almeida shared. They wanted to make it so “she [could stay] here forever,” he chuckled. She was taking classes as slowly as she could, according to Almeida, because she loved being here in the program. Almeida shared, “Everyone that Megan made contact with ended up becoming her friend after that.”
Megan’s former landlord attended her celebration of life and shared the story about how Megan and her boyfriend had an apartment but ended up facing eviction. Megan moved out, but the boyfriend stayed. Eventually, they ended up going to court. Despite a troubling moment, Megan became friends with her former landlord’s attorney. “She was just infectious anywhere she went,” Almeida shared.
The Automotive department wants to create a scholarship in her name. Her family will decide the requirements for the scholarship. With the help of George LoCascio, the Assistant Professor of the Natural Resources department, a memorial garden will be created in remembrance of Megan. LoCascio is going to get his students to design and build a garden right outside the Automotive building in the picnic area where Megan used to eat her lunch. The plan is to have it opened in Spring 2023.
Along with professors and fellow students, Megan will be remembered by her best friend, Alicia Blake. Blake recalled a time when she and Megan went to CVS in Harvard Square. “We [received] a receipt that was about 3 feet long. Megan proceeded to skip around, waving it in the air like a ribbon as we walked along,” she shared. “She was laughing the whole time and made some strangers laugh along with us.”
Acknowledging that people don’t often get the chance to praise their loved ones while they’re still here, Blake noted, “I always sung praise about Megan while she was still here. She always pushed me to go for what I wanted in life and what makes me happy.”
Blake recalled a job that she left because it was making her miserable, but Megan was the one that helped her come to that realization. “I told her my dream of traveling, and because of her support, I drove across the country and back in March of this year,” Blake said.
The two hiked and traveled together often. “At the end of my month-long cross-country trip, she [Megan] flew out and finished the trip home with me for the last five days of it,” Blake said.
They always tried to find new trails to hike around New England. Megan’s strong personality could not obscure her kindness. Blake said, “Sometimes she came across as harsh, but it was always with good intentions and a giant heart. We also both love the music venue The Palladium in Worcester and went to many concerts there. Her favorite bands were Dayseeker, We came as Romans, Volumes, Amity Affliction, Holding Absence, Movements, Being as an Ocean, and Loveless.”
Megan embodied the ability to resolve conflict and connect with the most difficult people. Her mother added, “She took care of the misfits in the area.” Anne shared a time when Megan befriended a difficult neighbor of a client they both took care of. “There was this guy that lived next door to Olive, a woman that we took care of,” she began. “It was a dead-end street, and he has three vehicles, but he would only use two vehicles,” stating that the third vehicle would be used for a parking space. “It would make parking a challenge.”
After being able to successfully get the city to put handicap parking signs in front of her client’s door, to her surprise, “He went and got a handicap placard and started parking in this woman’s spot.” Although Anne was faced with an annoying situation and was on the verge of losing her mind with this man, at that moment of time, Megan became friends with him.
She looked into his background and connected with him while softly reminding her mom, “Try to look at the upside” because she always tried to find the good in people. “She never blew up at people, “Anne shared. “Her attitude was more so, it will work out. That’s how she rode the wave.”
An obstacle that Megan struggled with also served as an example of her resilience and desire to learn from her past and help others grow. “From seventeen to twenty-four, she was struggling with heroin,” Anne shared. “She was in pretty deep, and heroin is one of the hardest things to overcome.”
When her parents learned of her addiction, they took her on a ride toward a wake-up call. “I told her let’s go for a ride, and I didn’t tell her where we were going except we have a Christmas gift that we want her to pick out,” Anne shared.
Her parents took her out for breakfast and stopped at a place for monuments. Anne recalled Megan asking, “Why are we here?” Her mother replied, “You’re going to need one, and you might as well pick it out yourself,” continuing as she burst into tears, “Because what you’re doing is killing yourself, and you might as well be a part of the process and relieve us of this because we want one less thing to have to do when you finally go.”
It was a wake-up call that worked. Amazingly, she had gone through four rehabs and many detoxes. “She’s been to the cape, and I did not think this was going to work in her favor, and I thought we were going to be burying her in this way,” Anne said.
Despite the challenges she faced, Megan proved to be resilient and successfully recovered from this addiction. “Eventually, she got off her methadone,” Anne shared. “She didn’t feel bad, and she didn’t need to feel the need to have something as long as she kept herself busy.”
Megan also worked alongside her mother to provide personal care for a ninety-five-year-old woman. The time came for her mother to take a three-week trip to Ireland, and Megan ensured she was not going to plan her own trip during the time her mother was away. Anne said, “I told her she will be in charge while I was gone and not to plan any trips those three weeks that I will be away.”
However, like the adventurer that Megan was, she reached out to her mom to inform her that she had planned a trip to Canada the last week her mother would be away. “That meant we’re both going to be out of the country at the same time,” Anne shared. “I was so upset. I don’t get to go on these trips ever.”
Recalling a past conversation preceding her death, Anne shared, “It was like she knew she wasn’t going to be here.” They were having a conversation about a person that had died doing what they loved, and then Megan blurted out, “Mom, if I ever died in a motorcycle accident, I would be fine with that because it was something that I love to do.”
Unsure if it was something for Anne to look back on or a sense of bizarre comfort from up above, “Maybe I knew this was coming,” Anne shared. Three weeks later, Megan passed away from a motorcycle accident on September 22, 2022.
Though the news was tragic, knowing she was a person of faith gave her family comfort. Megan was raised in a religious background and held onto her spiritual belief as she ventured off onto her own spiritual path in adulthood. Her favorite phrase was a phrase that Jesus spoke to his followers, “Love one another as I have loved you.” It was a phrase that she expressed through her actions as she lived, especially as a fully-fledged adult, said her mother: “I got to see her at her best.”
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