IN MEMORIAM · AMITYVILLE

If you came through the doors of the Town of Babylon’s Department of Human Services needing food, heat or a Christmas for your kids, there is a good chance Bessie Lowe is the person who handled it.

She has died at 71.

Lowe was born May 3, 1955, in Livingston, Alabama, and moved to Amityville in the early 1980s. She spent her working life in the Town’s Department of Human Services, preparing food donations for residents and scheduling intake appointments for HEAP and Project Warmth.

She also coordinated the department’s food pantry services, its Thanksgiving baskets, and the Christmas program in which Town staff adopt a family and provide food and presents for the children.

Those are the programs that carry a household through a bad winter, and they ran through her.

“She made it her mission to assist anyone who walked through the doors of the Human Services Department,” her niece, Jovon Rodriguez, told Newsday. “She had a remarkable way of making a person feel seen, valued and cared for.”

Her supervisor at the Town, Madeline Quintyne, put it another way.

“There are some people who come into your life and then there are those rare and precious souls whom God places in your life for a divine purpose,” Quintyne said. “Bessie Lowe was one of those people.”

She did something else worth putting on the record. Lowe graduated from St. Joseph’s College with a bachelor’s degree in human services in 2022, and earned her master’s degree in 2024 — at 69 years old, while doing the job.

Her family remembers the other side of her: a woman who loved getting dressed and looking fabulous, who knew how to make an entrance, who offered a smile and a prayer at every gathering.

“Bessie loved to celebrate life and be surrounded by family and friends,” Rodriguez said. “She was a beautiful, humble person, who treated others with kindness, respect and genuine love.”

Asked what her aunt would want people to take from her life, Rodriguez said the message was to keep God first, love your family, cherish your friendships, and forgive.

“She would want people to always make room in their hearts for someone who needs love,” she said.

A funeral was held August 20 at Prayers Tabernacle Church of God in Christ in Amityville, followed by interment at Amityville Cemetery. Lowe is survived by her son, Terrell Taylor, and her niece.

Sources: Newsday · Town of Babylon