Date: Halloween, October 31, 2011
Location:  Memorial Medical Center
                 Springfield, Illinois
Diagnosis:  Brain Stem Stroke (balance 
 center of the brain) / Heart attack / Aspiration pneumonia, all simultaneously!

Why? The story of the Highwayman

This is all about the passing of a great man, and lessons learned. David's father, Roy Lowery passed in 1988 of a ruptured aortic aneurysm. He had completed 25 long years in an Illinois deep coal mine, and was enjoying retirement time and a house on a private lake in Arkansas  A mountain of a man, fellow miners called him "Big Roy." He had a yearly physical and the doctor pronounced him healthy as a horse, unbelievably free of the dreaded black lung from coal dust. Then, a fateful morning in 1988, an un-diagnosed aortic aneurysm burst, and he was airlifted from rural Arkansas to better help in Memphis, but it was too late. After only 4 years of retirement. David was devastated but continued to raise his children and honor his father's memory. When he unexpectedly divorced in 2003, he was left with the decision of what to do with the rest of his life. Kids growing up rapidly, no wife, no house, very few responsibilities. David realized that he did not want to go out like his father, and was going to find a way to do what he loved in his time left on earth. Determined to combine his love of photography, with his passion for the paranormal, he decided to refurbish an older RV and travel the highways of America looking for the unknown. His thought was that if he had to wash dishes for dinner and gas, or sell some pictures, that is what he would do. Friends learned of his plans and began to call him "The Paranormal Highwayman" and the nickname stuck. About at this point, David had a lucid dream. He was walking down an empty highway, and grew tired. He rested under an old, dead tree and fell fast asleep. When he awoke, the tree was full of Blackbirds of all descriptions. A murder of Crows swooped down and picked him up, and carried him down the highway. He was already fond of naming his vehicles, so the class A motorcoach he would find and purchase would be called: BlackBird. David eventually brought home the perfect example, a 1976 Avco 30ft class A motorcoach, He began a restoration and conversion into a fully equipped paranormal lab. Then the first and most dangerous problem appeared. Halloween of 2011 rolled around and David suffered severe vertigo, to the point he could not even sit up. Housemate and bestie Karen Martin called an ambulance and David was taken to Memorial Hospital there admitted with what was thought to be just a heart attack. David continued to worsen, and in a paranormal moment, tells of leaving his body after losing his swallow response. Circling above his room full of doctors and nurses, he heard the attending physician say "this man is not only having a heart attack, but is having a stroke too!" He re-entered his body and awakened. They set about the long journey of nursing a man who should have been dead, back to health. The nurses took to calling him "The Miracle Man." David recovered with only a few remaining complications but was deemed disabled due to several factors, including medicine side effects! Now the dream was cemented even stronger. Work on the motorhome continued as much as David could, it was slow going for sure. During his diagnosis and treatment, doctors also found an aortic aneurysm almost exactly like the one that killed his father! Exactly two years to the day, Halloween 2013, surgeons successfully repaired it after it had shown signs of growing to a dangerous size. Once again David faced a recovery process, and more time passed by.  Needing a vehicle to drive, plus needing a support vehicle to pull behind BlackBird, David purchased a 1999 Chevrolet Tahoe 2 door and set about slowly turning it into a nighttime investigation vehicle for Sasquatch and other cryptids. thus, "The Beast" was born. David's health has stabilized and as he says, "when my doctors are happy, I'm happy." Work on the vehicles is nearing completion and David is looking forward to chasing the unknown on the Highways of America!