Alan Rowland Obituary

ALAN WHEATLEY ROWLAND Retired architect Alan Wheatley Rowland died at his Manoa home on August 5, 2023 at the age of 96. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to Habitat for Humanity. Here is his story, in his own words: In recalling my life, I seem to have been plagued with luck, mostly good. I was fortunate to have been born to two intelligent parents, journalist/historian Leon Bangs Rowland and physical education teacher/homemaker Jeannette Wheatley Rowland, in San Francisco's Stanford Lane Hospital on October 3, 1926. Good fortune proceeded in their choosing to move to Santa Cruz, where the mountains and the sea both provided wonderful environments to explore and enjoy. Mission Hill (K-9) and Santa Cruz High (10-12) brought graduation in June of 1944. I immediately fulfilled a long-held wish to join the Navy. After boot camp at Farragut, Idaho and Fire Control Schools in Seattle and Florida, I was asked if I wanted to take the V-12 (NROTC) test. Luck smiled upon me by my passing the test and being assigned to Stanford University, 70 miles from home. After seven quarters at Stanford, I transferred to UC Berkeley which had a School of Architecture. My class of '51 was the last of Cal's four-year Architecture curriculum. After graduation I found employment with the International Engineering Company in San Francisco. While there I developed a friendship with a civil engineer who found employment with a US firm in Japan. Luckily for me he was asked if he knew any architects who might want to work in Japan. Of course I said yes and arrived there in April of 1952. I had heard the adage that "for an architect to go to Japan for the first time is like coming home." I saw that to be true in the pleasing proportions, the honest use of materials, modular design, and the ubiquitous sense of shelter. I saw little such in the US Military-designed structures I was asked to work on for my first three years there. The Japan I wanted to experience was in the undamaged-by-war city of Kyoto. At the time of my move, there was a Cal friend there on a Fulbright Scholarship who was my entre to the Terami family, whose gaijin tenant was departing. Luck struck again as they all spoke English. I look back on the 16 months in Kyoto as some of my life's most pleasant. It was during this time that I was introduced to "Iki No Kozo" by Kuki Shuzo and enjoyed exploring that aesthetic. Knowing that I would always be gaijin in Japan, it was time to return to the land of my birth. In the Fall of 1956 I decided to do that via President Line ships with a two week stop in Honolulu. During that period I met Alfred Preis, architect, who told me that, if I was interested in a job, there were some available. One of several architects whom I contacted was Vladimir Ossipoff, who offered me a job. What luck! I was fortunate in being able to work on award-winning architecture with the best of all possible mentors for the next 42 years. After retiring in 1999, I opened my one-man office, doing mostly referral work. The luckiest event in my life was in meeting, courting, and wedding Margaret Mary "Molly" Walker. We were married in July of 1958. She has been the love of my life ever since, and has been the guiding influence for the positive outcomes of our three children, and the wind beneath my wings these past 65 years. I am predeceased by my parents, my older sister Jean, my brother Ralph, and my son-in-law Charlie Ciszek. Survivors are my wife Molly, sons Scott Kaniela Rowland (Mele Look) and Craig Matthew Rowland (Marilet Zablan), daughter Alison Rowland-Ciszek, and grandchildren Galen Ciszek (Christine Kline), Corbin Ciszek, Lehua Rowland, Kai Rowland, and Lina Rowland. Among those I thank for enriching my life in Hawaii are the late Shuji Miura (contractor), art teacher George Wollard, and woodworking perfectionist Leroy Akimoto, who, like myself, is an admirer of Sukiya Zukuri. Mo sukoshi kantan no hou ga ii deshou? Private scattering of my ashes. Arrangements Provided By: O'ahu Mortuary