Celebrating retirement from a career of public service
By David Blanchette
Greg Lowe’s father Kenneth, uncles Donald and Jerry, and cousin Bill Force were all involved in Lowe Ambulance Service in Jacksonville during the 1960s and 1970s, and Greg Lowe’s proximity to the business gave him a lifelong passion for emergency services.
The 63-year-old Lowe recently retired after a four-decade career that has seen him work as an EMT, volunteer firefighter, corrections officer, police officer and deputy Morgan County Coroner, and it all started because of his family influences.
“Fresh out of high school I decided I might as well get in the EMS [emergency medical services] business, too,” Lowe said. “So I got my EMT [emergency medical technician] license and went to work for Jeff Lair and George Bengel at Aero Ambulance in Jacksonville.”
Lowe was born and raised in Jacksonville and moved to Franklin in 1982, where he and his wife have resided ever since. When the Jacksonville Correctional Center opened in 1984, Lowe left the ambulance company and went to work at the prison full time before transferring to Taylorville to help open that prison in 1990. Lowe transferred back to the Jacksonville Correctional Center in 1997 and took on several part-time gigs as a police officer in Franklin and Waverly and volunteer fire chief in Franklin.
“That’s how I met all those people who actually kind of molded me, so everything I’ve done wrong is really their fault,” said Lowe with a chuckle.
Lowe applied for a position with the Jacksonville Police Department and was one of the top two candidates on the eligibility list. But Lowe was never hired by the department, so he kept his full-time job with the Department of Corrections and his part-time volunteer police and fire jobs.
Around that time, Lowe’s friend and former ambulance company boss, then Morgan County Coroner Jeff Lair, had a deputy coroner position that had just come open and, “I called up my old buddy Jeff and said if he needed help, I’d help,” Lowe said. The volunteer deputy coroner position, which he took in 1997, meant that Lowe filled in for Lair when necessary and often assisted in death investigations.
Lowe took a 40-hour course in death investigation and forensic science through the Illinois Coroners & Medical Examiners Association to prepare himself for his new volunteer role. But Lowe soon discovered that the coroner’s office isn’t all about science.
“When I first got involved in the EMS business, my bosses told me the most important thing you can do is treat the victims and their families the way you would want to be treated,” Lowe recalled. “That carried right over into the coroner’s office with Jeff Lair, and that’s been the motto with me since day one. It’s also been the practice for Marcy Patterson, who is now the coroner.”
Lowe has experienced some harrowing things as deputy coroner, but the worst situation for him was a 2017 triple fire fatality in Franklin where one of the victims was a fellow volunteer firefighter.
“The deputy coroner can be a very taxing job both physically and emotionally,” Lowe said. “Some nights you get sleep and some nights you don’t. The coroner is the one who takes the brunt of the calls, but when you’re covering for them, you may have back to back calls where you’re up all night and that takes its toll, especially combined with all of the other jobs I was doing for so many years.”
Lowe decided to slow down when he experienced a heart attack and battled lung cancer, so he retired from his volunteer police and fire positions in 2007 and from the Department of Corrections in 2011. Lowe retired as Deputy Morgan County Coroner on March 1 of this year.
“Thankfully, Marcy [Patterson] started recruiting a younger generation of people to help with the coroner’s office because it’s time for some new blood to come in,” Lowe said.
Lowe plans to play golf five days per week during retirement and he and Linda, his wife of 44 years, plan frequent visits with their three grown sons and their families, plus their seven grandchildren.
“I’m just being a grandpa now,” Lowe said. “I’ve enjoyed my 40-year EMS career but chasing grandkids is the best job there is.”
