Harold Sandy Bowers and Julia Bowers

Research and Innovation and Health and Health Equity

Harold “Sandy” Bowers and his wife, Julia, shared 26 years of marriage. When Julia died from cancer in November 2016, Sandy was left with grief, memory, and a question: How could the love they built together continue to do good in the world?

He found the answer in Julia’s compassion for children. Sandy established the Julia E. Bowers Memorial Endowment for Pediatric Oncology at UNM Hospital, directing a planned gift toward childhood cancer research and treatment. The endowment carries her name into laboratories and clinics where physicians and researchers work toward better therapies and children arrive with families hoping for more time.

Sandy and Julia, like many couples, found end-of-life conversations difficult. Creating the endowment after her death gave Sandy a way to say what those conversations could not. It honors the woman he loved not with a static memorial, but with work still unfolding: another question investigated, another treatment improved, another child cared for.

For Sandy, the value of the gift is not measured in wealth or recognition. It lives in a future he may never see, when a family hears that a treatment is working and a child gets to return to the ordinary wonders of growing up.

Julia gave Sandy 26 years of love. Through this endowment, that love now reaches children and families they never met. Be the reason research advances, care improves, and a child facing cancer is given more tomorrows.