A Life of Words

My remarkable friend Karl Bowman and I, who’ve known each other only a little over 4 years, text each other pretty often to see how we’re doing. He’s a wide-open book and sends long texts to catch me up on what’s been going on in his life and find out how my family and I are.

Karl is unique, genuine and caring. We share the same kinds of personal, moral and political convictions. That’s one of the reasons why, when we met through Facebook in late 2020, Karl and I immediately hit it off. He also loved that I was a newspaper journalist. And for all the gripes I have about this FB platform’s evils that brought me to the brink of saying adios several years ago, it does keep people connected and bring them together.

This is the kind of heart Karl has: He and his wife, Jenny, supported an orphan in Uganda named Charles into adulthood. They visited him in 2018.

A few weeks ago, I realized I hadn’t received a text from Karl in a while. Too much life had gotten in the way and I hadn’t had a chance to check in. I looked at our text thread and it had been about three months, since late February. He’d sent me a lengthy message in which he told me his brother had suffered a major cardiac event and almost died, which prompted Karl and his sister to make appointments with cardiologists. Karl’s initial testing found some issues so he planned to have further testing in early March, including an echocardiogram and stress test.

Since I hadn’t heard from Karl in so long and his last message had mentioned possible heart concerns, my mind (as it tends to) jumped to the worst possible conclusion. Before calling him or sending him a text, I went to his Facebook page.

There, my fears were confirmed: I read, overtaken with sadness, several posts bearing out the heartbreaking news that Karl had passed away March 10 – just over two weeks after our last text exchange. Karl, an Arlington resident like my family and I, would’ve been 69 in August.

I was stunned and despondent that someone who had become such a dear friend and confidante in such a short time was suddenly gone – and more that I had not even known.

Since I didn’t find out about Karl’s passing until two months too late, I missed his memorial service, which grieves me greatly. I have never had a chance to meet Jenny, to whom Karl was married for nearly 38 years, or their adult children Austin and Hannah, but I so wish I could’ve had the chance to do so and express my condolences to them in person. I don’t yet know if it was a heart-related problem that took Karl or something else.

In addition to the details Karl filled me in on about his heart tests, he had also been dealing with hearing loss in his left ear for many years and was seeing an ENT. Karl was an uber-gifted guitarist and writer of music who performed with a couple of D-FW rock bands for 30 years, the SpinDizzies and The Gash. Jenny joined him in this decades-long passion. In their gigs, Karl always played stage right, so that would explain the hearing loss in his left ear.

Austin is also a guitarist and Karl loved jamming with him as well as with friends. Karl, who grew up in Dallas, traveled often with Jenny and also told me about his love for his second home in Jones Valley, Arkansas, and Hillbilly, the family cabin where he attended Bowman family reunions. For 38 years, Karl worked for The Freeman Company, a global firm based in Dallas that specializes in conventions, exhibits, corporate events and expositions.

Growing up in North Texas, Karl was a lifelong Texas Rangers fan. Most of y’all know I grew up in the Houston area and the Astros are my team above all others (even the Aggies). On Oct. 19, 2023, I invited Karl to join me for Game 4 of the American League Championship Series between the Astros and Rangers at Globe Life Field in Arlington. Although the game didn’t go Karl’s way, with the Astros taking a 3-0 lead in the first inning on the way to a 10-3 victory that tied the series at two games apiece, Karl was grateful for the opportunity to attend a playoff game.

There was a bit of kismet involved in how Karl and I met through FB. A friend and former Fort Worth Star-Telegram colleague of mine, Mitch Mitchell, had passed away all too young in October 2020. After I commented on a FB post in sympathy and tribute to Mitch, Karl also commented and noticed I was a former S-T journalist. He asked if I had any details about how Mitch died, so I decided to send Karl a PM with what I knew.

It turns out that Karl and Mitch had met years earlier when Mitch was covering a case involving the murder of Karl’s cousin, and they’d stayed in touch over the years. Karl was saddened by Mitch’s death, and as we chatted more over Messenger, I learned Karl was a voracious newspaper reader and had been (and still was) a subscriber to The Dallas Morning News – where I worked from 2000 to 2022 – for about 50 years. He even used to take the Dallas Times Herald before it closed in 1991.

I soon learned that well-known country musician Joe Diffie, one of the early COVID-19 deaths in March 2020, was also Karl’s cousin. He also told me about how he’d met Charley Pride (who also died of COVID in 2020) a couple of times and what a “wonderful human being” he was.

Here are Karl’s memories of those meetings with Charley: “In my early twenties, I was working the overnight shift at Denny’s in Dallas at Northwest and Marsh Lane. About 2 in the morning in the middle of a big Saturday night bar rush, the place went quiet. CHARLEY PRIDE was in the house. They seated him at the counter long enough to realize that wasn’t going to work so the waitress brought him in the back and we fed him in the manager’s office because EVERY SINGLE PERSON wanted to say hi to Charley Pride. He was the nicest man in the world and I was pleased to have cooked his breakfast. The second time was at an SMU basketball game with my Dad. We are getting us a Dr Pepper and a dog and Charley comes up right next to us to order. I reminded him of our previous meeting and he remembered it. We both got a big laugh again at the “horrors” of fame. But seriously, you would never meet a nicer guy in your life. Universally loved. And he treated everyone the same.”

One more incredible thing about Karl: He was one of those people who could remember EVERY DETAIL about his dreams, which were always cool and waaaay out there. Sometimes I can remember some of my dreams when I first wake up. But then a little later, I’ve forgotten the whole thing! Karl would post his dreams almost daily. His friends gravitated to his FB page just to read about them.

Here’s a sample of one of Karl’s dream posts, from Jan. 11, 2023:

“For all you friends that marvel at my ability to remember dreams, this sometimes is not a pleasant experience. I woke up an hour ago from an apocalyptic dream about alien invasion of our planet. My wife was in the San Francisco area while I was in Seattle and my kids were not placed in the dream. The aliens hit with great destruction. The first night I slept in the rubble of a collapsed mall. It had a good vantage point of being able to see the ocean though. Myself and some other men were armed with everything from guns to sticks. I had a machete. We fought an attack of aliens that flew at us. Kind of like Oz’ flying monkeys. They were not invincible though, and though they had superior destructive capabilities when it came to hand to hand fighting humanity was fighting for our planet and we inflicted heavy casualties. However we lost our vantage point and me and three others fought our way into the sea where the aliens seemed reticent to follow. Exhausted, I clung to a piece of flotsam and drifted south still clutching my machete. Meanwhile in San Francisco, Jennifer Cates (Karl’s wife) has survived the initial onslaught and like most others was fighting back. She found an ambulance that was gassed up and had the keys in it. She took off south in it headed toward Monterrey. Picking up several women and children and some bad ass amazons ready to fight. They drove to an army base that had been destroyed and were parked near the beach when my raft crashed into the rocks on the beach. Imagine my joy and seeing my wife pulling me up onto the beach and knowing we were reunited…..but our total dismay when neither of us knew where our children were or if they were still alive.”

This is Karl’s last dream post, from March 2, 2025:

“Just woke up from a sprawling dream with a cast of thousands. It took place at a fair grounds and I was carrying too much stuff. Two coats, cause it was a hot and cold type of day. I saw an Elvis impersonator from the front row. Then I picked a stray cat who followed me around. I had a remote controlled Cadillac convertible car that was about 6” long that I lost in the crowd. I had to smuggle in David Bridges to get his arm scanned because we needed the tattoo of Julie London off of it and put onto me and it had to be perfect. I woke up as they were preparing to tattoo me. I’m not sure why it was so important to have nurse Dixie from the tv show Emergency! on my arm but thanks Dave for making the trip to get scanned. Woke up when I said “let me use the bathroom first”. Oh and the Elvis was a phillipino guy. The toy Cadillac was white, the cat was gray. There was a Hyatt hotel that was next to the fair. It went on and on and on.”

See? I told you Karl was a unique and special guy.

I miss you, my dear friend. I hope you’ve already put together a new band and you guys are rockin’ heaven just like you did all those years in your awesome earthly life.