Through his life, Fred Bowen carried Vietnam War with him

Fred Bowen's life was seared by service in the Vietnam War. After some years of wandering and struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, he forged an adventurous living in Arizona.

But events there brought back his pain. A little more than 10 years ago he returned to Seattle, where he sought peace living on a boat near Fisherman's Terminal in Seattle.

Mr. Bowen died Feb. 12 at age 54, after a long battle with liver cancer.

A year ago, Michael Lombardi, a friend in Ballard, performed a ritual for Mr. Bowen.

Traveling to Vietnam with his girlfriend, Lombardi carried with him Mr. Bowen's old camouflage jacket, his war medals — a Purple Heart and two bronze stars, including one for exceptional valor — and copies of his writings about the war. Mr. Bowen asked his friend to bury all this at a place he called Monkey Mountain, the scene of an intense battle.

"He said he had no use for it here. It belonged in Vietnam," Lombardi said. "It was a way to bury the past."

In Vietnam, Lombardi found the site had turned into an amusement park, with gondola rides to the top of the mountain. He buried the memorabilia beneath the gondolas.

And because Mr. Bowen had described painful memories of six people he had killed in combat, Lombardi and his girlfriend burned seven pieces of incense at the burial site — one for each of those killed and one for Mr. Bowen himself.

Mr. Bowen thanked him when he recounted all this, Lombardi said, and got a kick out of the rebirth of his battle zone as an amusement park.

The eldest of seven children, Mr. Bowen grew up in Renton. In 1969, he dropped out of high school and joined the Army at age 17.

He was a brilliant student but unhappy at school, said his father, Fred Bowen Sr.

During basic training at Fort Lewis, he got his GED and was selected to go to Fort Benning, Ga., for Special Forces training. After successfully completing that course, he shipped out to Vietnam.

During the war, Mr. Bowen took part in more than two dozen battlefield engagements and was injured by shrapnel. He saw close friends die, including one killed by "friendly fire."

"He was pretty young to experience the things he had to see," said his father, a retired vice president of human resources at Boeing's commercial airplane group. "He went through some tough times. He was confused."

Mr. Bowen told Lombardi that in the years after the war he wandered a lot. He hitchhiked around the United States and camped in woods, sometimes for months at a time.

In Florida, he used his parachuting skills to learn advanced skydiving skills. That helped him eventually get his life together. He became a skilled rigger of parachutes and started a parachute-supply store in Eloy, Ariz.

In the early 1990s, he talked his dad into doing a parachute jump, tied in tandem with another instructor. He filmed his father as they dropped to earth together.

But in the mid-'90s, after seven friends died in skydiving accidents within a year, Mr. Bowen sold the business.

He took a job tending a store. But that went badly when he was forced to shoot an armed robber, an incident that triggered anew his post-traumatic stress disorder, said his sister, Nancy Bowen.

Soon after, he returned to the Pacific Northwest, where he lived a more laid-back life, close to his large extended family and full of convivial friends in the boating community.

He hung out with the fishermen at the Highliner Pub.

Mr. Bowen wrote poetry and took part in a regular writing circle, where he gave impassioned readings of his own work. The war in Vietnam was a regular theme. Yet he also wrote optimistic, funny and ironic pieces.

"He was a lot of fun," said Rebecca Haywood, who knew him.

"He was very smart, very witty," said one friend, Kathleen Bath.

On permanent disability for post-traumatic stress disorder, he lived on his boat near the Ballard Bridge and did odd jobs for the fishermen and boaters. "He was as happy as he could be," said Nancy Bowen, who cared for him through his illness.

He is survived by his parents, Fred and Barbara of Port Ludlow, Jefferson County; siblings, Nancy of Kent, Tim of SeaTac, Teri Spencer of Covington, Patty Roberts of Enumclaw, Bob of Enumclaw and Judy Burden of Enumclaw; his brothers-in-law and many nephews and nieces.

Mr. Bowen will be buried Tuesday at Tahoma National Cemetery in Maple Valley with full military honors. A wake to celebrate his life will be held Saturday at the Highliner Pub.

When Bath saw him just days before his death, she teased him that at least he'd had fun these last few years.

"Damn right, I did," Mr. Bowen responded.

Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or dgates@seattletimes.com