Jack Mowat, former state representative, remembered for service to community, state

He was a World War II veteran, a fruit farmer, a school board president, a state legislator, a volunteer — someone who always just wanted to do right by his community and his people. You could say that Jack Mowat was just one of the good guys.

Lenawee County's state representative and state senator in the 1970s and early ’80s died on Valentine’s Day at the Kingston Residence in Sylvania, Ohio, at the age of 95.

Mowat lived a long life and did a lot of things for Lenawee County. He was born in Chicago in 1927, but his father, John Sr., a builder, had trouble finding work during the Depression and so he moved north and east to a farm just a couple of miles south of Adrian. The land was not good for much, but it made for a great orchard, and there he formed Mowat and Son Orchards.

Jack worked the orchard while growing up. After graduating from Adrian High School in 1944, he served in the Army Air Force from July 1944 to June 1946.

Jack was a 1950 graduate of Michigan State College (now Michigan State University) with a bachelor’s degree in agriculture. He was an avid Spartan until his death. Jack owned and managed Mowat and Son Orchards until 1988.

He married Jean Hazelrig on Dec. 30, 1954, and they had three sons, Rick, the oldest, and twins Ron and Rex.

In 1969, Jack was selected by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation as one of the top farmers in Michigan. As part of the Kellogg program, he toured and studied agricultural practices in the U.S. and around the world.

In 1970, Jack was elected to the Michigan House of Representatives, where he served for eight years. In 1978, he was elected to Michigan Senate until he stepped down in 1982 to run in a special election for a U.S. House of Representatives seat. U.S. Rep. John Stockman had been selected to head the Office of Management and Budget for the Reagan administration. Jack lost that election, but from 1984 until his retirement in 1993, Jack served as executive director for the Republican Party in the Michigan House of Representatives.

In retirement, Jack dabbled in home building and was a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity in Lake Lure, North Carolina. In addition to being a gifted photographer, he continued his avocation for building electronic and hydraulic devices.

His nephew, Bruce Neal, mostly remembers Jack working at the orchard, where he also grew up working.

“They had a fruit market where they sold the apples, peaches and cherries and each of course being in their season. And they were pretty well known in the Adrian area as the place to go and get fruit,” Neal said. “He seemed to be well liked by people in state government because of the fact that he was a farmer. He made friends readily and had a personality that people liked and trusted.”

Ted Dusseau, the county Republican Party chairman, remembers Jack from when he served as school board president in Madison Township.

“Jack and I were members of the Madison school board together, and Jack was the president of the school board for quite some time when the school was back in the early stages and was expanding when the consolidation of all the rural school districts was going on,” Dusseau said. “Madison school at the very beginning was a one-room school and it then became an elementary, a large elementary with four or five districts combined and finally built its own high school and now it’s one of the leading high schools in Lenawee County.”

Dusseau added: “He was a very, very smart, conscientious, responsible citizen. He just thought that he had the responsibility to do what needed to be done for his community and finally his county.”

U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, remembered Mowat "as a down-to-earth and committed public servant with a ready smile and a passion for the district he represented. Over the years, he provided me with some good counsel and an example of how to best represent a community. Jack passed down a strong family legacy of service that is being carried out in many other noble ways. May his family find peace in his life well lived.”

Former Michigan Gov. John Engler remembers Jack as a nice man, but one who wasn’t silent when it came to debate.

“He was a great legislator, a great man, a good man. We came into the House together in 1970. He was an excellent legislator, he came out of local government background. So he had a lot of experience. I was pretty young at the time. I was only 22, but we became good friends, and we spent a lot of hours together,” Engler said.

There was much debate in those days around property taxes and the Republican Party had a strong inclination toward localization of control, but the Democrats held the majority, Engler said.

“He was a very nice man. He was thoughtful and respected by his colleagues. He was a good, solid, well-prepared legislator,” Engler said, noting that Jack was always bringing in apples from the orchard. “All of those years in the House of Representatives, we were in the minority. We didn’t just sit there and say we can’t do anything because we’re in the minority. We were always trying to fix legislation, and I say, ‘fix’ because we thought that our amendments improved what was being debated.”

After his retirement, Jack and Jean moved to the Carolinas, and in 2006 Jean, a longtime Adrian College professor, died. One year later, he married Jacquelyn Rosselot, whose maiden name was Kelly. They had been high school sweethearts at Adrian High School. Eventually, the couple moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where Jackie had spent most of her life.

Ron Mowat said he and his father had a lot in common. He said Jack was a workaholic.

“We grew up with work ethic. You had to get out and work. We started folding boxes to sell peaches and apples and pears from the age of 5 up. All three boys worked on that farm — not every minute of the day, but quite often,” Ron said. “My Dad was just like my grandfather. That’s just what they did. They just worked and worked and worked. We saw them when we worked. Otherwise, he left before we got up and came back home after we had gone to bed. I loved it because I love to work as well. So it was just interesting growing up. You don’t see that much of it anymore.”

Rick Mowat attended The Julliard School in New York as a classical musician playing trombone. In his acting days, he played in principal speaking roles in three Woody Allen films and now is a writer and director who lives in New Windsor, New York. Ron attended Yale as an architecture major and resides in Jasper, Indiana, and Rex Mowat is an oncologist/hematologist in Sylvania.

Rick said Jack was very supportive and wanted his children to take their opportunities to get out of town when they had them.

“He was a wonderful person. Overall, he was really a great dad. He was incredibly supportive to the three of us kids. He was funny. He was kind of strongarmed into the apple orchard business by his father and he did everything he could to make sure we got out the door and out to the world without looking back.”

Rick says he remembers Jack working on legislation to decriminalize marijuana possession and abortion. It was those two issues that his right-wing opponent for the U.S. House seat seized on, labeling Jack as a “pot-smoking abortionist.”

“You look back and even Obama wasn’t as liberal. So it was amazing back in the middle of the ’70s. That’s the kind of guy he was. On the other hand, he palled around with the governor of Michigan, he knew George Bush Sr.; Henry Kissinger he had met a few times. He was very friendly with a lot of people in high places, and he always remained a man of the people, and throughout most of this time we still had the orchard,” Rick said. “So, yes, we had a manager and people who worked under him to keep it going, but he would drive home a lot, he would be commuting from Lansing to Adrian, 90 miles each way, three or four times a week. He would do that round trip because he had to make sure the business was going well and it was a lot. It was what he had to do and he did it.”

Jackie died a little over a year ago, and the boys moved Jack to a nursing home in Sylvania just two weeks before he died. He had been on a walker for the past couple of years, but he retained his acute mental acumen until just a couple of days before he died.

Jack is also survived by his daughters-in-law, Rick’s wife, Paula, Rex’s wife, Linda, and Ron’s wife, Carolyn, as well as his seven grandchildren, Zander, Tyler, Dylan, Cameron, Lina, Nellie and William. He is also survived by nieces and nephews, including Neal of Adrian.

A celebration of Jack’s life will take place from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday, March 5, in Adrian at Chaloner & Co., 108 W. Maumee St.

Memorial contributions can be made to the Lenawee County Historical Museum at lenaweehistoricalsociety.org.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Jack Mowat, former state representative and senator, dies at 95