BATON ROUGE – Robert “Bobby” Lowther, LSU’s only two-sport first-team All-American in track and field and basketball, passed away Monday in Alexandria at the age of 91.
Lowther was inducted into the LSU Athletic Hall of Fame in 1978 and was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in Natchitoches in 1995. He was a member of the National “L” Club lettermen’s club at LSU.
He earned All-American honors in 1946, the same year he joined four Kentucky players on the five-man All-Southeastern Conference basketball team. He was a member of the Helms Foundation All-American basketball team (the most prestigious All-America team of its era) after scoring 308 points in 21 games, averaging 14.7 points per game. He scored 45 points in the SEC Tournament.
Lowther would come back the following year and average 12.7 points per game.
The field was his home on the track, specializing in the pole vault and javelin. He was the third place finisher in the 1946 National AAU decathlon and was among the early favorites for the 1948 Olympic decathlon before a broken leg suffered in the 1947 SEC meet in Birmingham prevented him from competing in the 1948 Olympic Trials.
Lowther, despite that injury, was seeded in 1948 ahead of Bob Mathias, the Olympic champion in the trials, but Lowther had to withdraw shortly after competition began because his broken leg had not healed sufficiently.
Lowther won the SEC championship four times in the javelin and/or pole vault and won at such prestigious places as the Drake and Texas Relays. He was also the triple jump champion at the National AAU meet in 1946.
In 1946 and 1947, he jumped 12-6 in the pole vault to win the conference championship and captured the SEC javelin title in 1946 with a toss of 195-7 and in 1948 with a distance of 195-5¼.
He went on to earn All-American honors in both the javelin and pole vault, finishing fourth in the pole vault and second in the javelin. In 1948 his SEC javelin title helped LSU to the team outdoor league title.
“The pole vault and javelin are usually not compatible,” Lowther said prior to his Hall of Fame induction to Alexandria writer Bob Tompkins concerning Lowther’s 6-5, 185 pound frame. “How many times have you heard of a guy competing in both events, much less winning them? My weight was important in both. I had to keep a happy medium. I needed the weight for the javelin, but I didn’t want too much weight for the pole vault.”
Lowther received the “Best All-Around Athlete” award at LSU’s athletic banquet in 1947 – the day before his injury at the SEC meet. Among those he beat out were future Louisiana Hall of Famers and Tiger stars Y. A. Tittle, Joe Adcock and Frank Brian.
Like many of the time, his career was interrupted by World War II as he spent two years in the mid-1940s as an Army pilot. After college, he played professional basketball for a couple of years with the Tri-City Blackhawks and then the Montgomery Rebels.
Even well into his 70s, Lowther, who was LSU’s “Living Legend” at the Southeastern Conference Tournament, could often be seen shooting 3-point shots with deadly accuracy at H. O. West Fieldhouse on the Louisiana College campus.
According to Tompkins, while taping a piece for an Alexandria television station, Lowther hit 12 straight 3-pointers, as well as a shot from out-of-bounds at the corner of the base line. Lowther said afterwards a young 18-year-old girl came up after seeing his exhibition and said, “I need your autograph, whoever you are.”
He was a member of the All-Decade LSU Basketball Team of the 1940s selected in 2009 as part of LSU’s basketball centennial celebration.
Lowther, born on December 14, 1923, was a 1941 graduate of Bolton High School in Alexandria and on his LSU Athletic Questionnaire, he wrote by the word “Physique” that he was “lanky.”
Before his athletic endeavors at LSU, he served almost 2.5 years in the Army Air Corps where the pilot earned the rank of Lieutenant. While in the Army he played basketball on the Sheppard Field championship team in 1943, the Maxwell Field All-Star Team and with a team at Gulfport (Miss.) Field.
Funeral arrangements are pending.