THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 21, 1996 TAG: 9606210499
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: 46 lines
Dr. Zack Doxey Owens, a beloved country doctor whose memory-filled life nearly spanned the 20th century, died Wednesday in Guardian Care Nursing Home.
It was fitting that the 91-year-old's life ended from the slow decline of his great age rather than the cancer that he battled and defeated years ago.
As an old-fashioned family practitioner, Dr. Owens sometimes seemed obsessed with any and all malignancies that relentlessly killed his wife, many of his friends and many of his patients. His wife, Martha, died of a brain tumor in 1963.
Zack and Martha Owens met and married while she was working as a registered nurse and medical technician in the old yellow Medical Building. Dr. Owens maintained an office in the Medical Building until he retired in 1970.
``Dr. Zack,'' as he was known, received his medical degree from the University of Maryland Medical School in 1930. After interning and a residency in two Baltimore hospitals, he returned to Elizabeth City and started his practice in 1933.
Dr. Owens played a key role in getting the Albemarle Hospital financed and built on U.S. 17 north of Elizabeth City.
Until recently, Dr. Owens showed up nearly every morning to pick up his mail at the downtown post office. Inevitably, his conversations involved new ways to help young people get into medicine and the health care professions.
No one will ever know how many special scholarships Dr. Owens provided to put students through the nursing school at the College of the Albemarle.
Dr. Owens was born in Jarvisburg in Currituck County in 1904 in a family that was long on biblical names. There were several Zachariahs and at least one Hezekiah among his ancestors.
Owens remembered his father, William Littlejohn Owens, taking him on a famous local steamboat, the Annie L. Vansciver, from Newbern's Landing on the North River in Currituck County to Elizabeth City for shopping trips.
The family later moved to Elizabeth City to find better schools for Zack and his sisters.
Funeral services will be held Saturday at 11 a.m. in Twiford's Memorial Chapel on Church Street. Private burial will follow in Hollywood Cemetery. The family will receive friends on Friday from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Twiford's Memorial Chapel. Friends will also be received at other times at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Bill Jones in Camden.
The family has requested that donations be made to a favorite charity.
KEYWORDS: DEATH OBITUARY by CNB