Lucas Fowler will be remembered as a good man, avid outdoorsman
This story is from Rural Montana Magazine on behalf of our fellow Montana Co-op, Sun River Electric Cooperative.
STORY BY RYAN HALL | RURAL MONTANA EDITOR
On Aug. 16, a white hearse carried Lucas Fowler, a Sun River Electric Cooperative lineman who lost his life when a pole he was climbing toppled over a week earlier, underneath a memorial arch made of bucket trucks from utilities across the state.
Hundreds of cars followed, passing dozens of linemen standing stoically in the heat, hardhats held across their hearts as the community of Conrad mourned the loss of one of their own.
Fowler, 28, was born and raised in Conrad — a local guy who knew everybody. He had recently got a job with Sun River Electric at its Conrad outpost. It was a perfect fit.
“He was a great lineman and a hard worker. He was always the first to lend a hand,” said Line Foreman Robbie Dockter, Lucas’ boss and longtime friend. “If there were only two shovels and three guys, he was taking one.”
“If I didn’t teach these kids nothing else, I taught them how to work,” said Lucas’ father, Matt Fowler. “He’d always stop and help me work livestock or whatever we were doing. I didn’t want anyone else around because he and I could do it in minutes.”
Dockter said he knew Lucas for about 15 years, with the two frequently going duck hunting together. They also gathered with other friends every President’s Day to make salami and meat sticks from the game taken on previous hunting trips.
Lucas was an avid outdoorsman who enjoyed hunting and fishing, but training and running his three hound dogs was his favorite pastime.
“He was a diehard houndsman. That was his passion,” Dockter said. “He loved to run lions, he liked to run bears, and he really raised hell with coons during the week.”
Dockter said Fowler could be found in the irrigation ditches with his dogs anytime he could, hunting raccoons.
Matt Fowler said Lucas likely got the houndsman bug from his uncles, who always had hunting hounds.
“He brought a pup home, I think from Wyoming, when he was down there building a powerline. He just had to have one,” Matt Fowler said.
Remembering a special person
Matt Fowler said his son’s unique look at life was evident early on.
He recalled leaving 4-year-old Lucas outside for just a few seconds while he ran inside to get a bottle of water. When Matt Fowler returned to the job the pair was about to do — filling the family’s cistern — Lucas was nowhere to be found.
Matt Fowler looked for his son for a few minutes, and asked his wife if the boy had gone in the house. He hadn’t.
“Then I looked over at that cistern, and I was like, ‘oh no!’” Matt Fowler recalled.
He ran to the cistern, lifted the lid and called his son’s name. “Yeah?” Lucas replied from the bottom of the cistern.
The boy had stepped on the cistern lid, and it flipped, sending him down the 8- to 9-foot-deep cistern, then flipping back so the lid looked undisturbed. Luckily, there was only about a foot of water in the cistern at the time.
“How he didn’t get hurt is beyond me,” Matt Fowler said.
He threw a lariat rope down to his son, who put the loop under his armpits and was hoisted up.
“I brought him out of there like a drowned rat,” Matt Fowler said. “And all he said is, ‘Next time I go down there I’m taking a flashlight.’”
Another story Matt Fowler shared was of a time Lucas took two out-of-state buddies elk hunting. The trio hiked 10-12 miles into an area, chasing a herd of elk. Lucas decided to stay the night rather than hiking out and then back in the next morning.
The men didn’t have a tent, but Lucas always carried a tarp. They put their back to a natural wall on top of a little ravine, and started a fire. One man would tend the fire while the other two slept.
At one point, one of Lucas’ friends who was on watch fell asleep, and the fire went out. Lucas woke up to wolves being too close to the makeshift campsite.
“When Luke woke up, there’s all these eyes out there,” Matt Fowler said, adding that Lucas quickly woke up the man who was supposed to be on watch. “He said, ‘Here, look at this. You were about to be a snack.’ I don’t think that kid went to sleep again that night!”
As for his career choice, Matt Fowler said he didn’t know why Lucas wanted to be a lineman.
“That kind of surprised me,” he said, adding that when Lucas made his career choice, he went about it like he did everything else, with determination.
“When I went to graduation he was nominated for every award in the (lineman) school,” Matt Fowler said. “He ended up being the Skills Award winner, and he was the hurtman rescue champion.”
Matt Fowler said Lucas will be remembered for many things. He was a standout athlete in school, a great lineman, an excellent outdoorsman, a wonderful son and an outgoing man who was always happy, no matter what he was doing.
“He was a good man — taken away too soon,” Matt Fowler said. “It’s left a pretty big hole in our family.”
Republished with permission from Rural Montana Magazine, the magazine of Montana’s Electric Cooperatives Association (MECA).
Read this article in the September edition of Rural Montana: Rural Montana Magazine | October 2024 (PDF)