She was born in Price, Utah, to Rhea Wakefield and Perry L. McArthur. She grew up in Price, a small city in southeast Utah, where she attended Carbon High School. She earned a B.A. degree in English at Utah State University and an M.A. in English and speech at Washington State University.
After graduate school, she taught English at Middletown High School in Frederick County, Maryland. In 1968, she moved with her family to Ames, Iowa, where she taught speech, English and British literature for 26 years.
Annette retired from Ames High in 1996 and devoted much of the next 10 years to serving on the board, organizing and teaching at OLLI, the college for seniors at Iowa State University. In 2008, she moved with her husband to a retirement community in Saco.
Annette was a patron of the arts at Iowa State University’s Brunnier Gallery and at the Portland Museum of Art, where she was a member of the museum’s elite Group of One Hundred. She often visited the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, a place founded, in part, to honor the work of the Wyeth family of painters.
Annette loved the theater and dramatic productions. She was a member of the Ames Community Theater Company (ACTORS), where she participated in numerous productions as an actress, producer, director and member of the board. In 2001, she received the Local Treasure Award from the Ames Community Arts Council. She was a member of the Ames Chapter of the Des Moines Opera Guild, where she served as chapter president.
She was an avid Iowa State University basketball fan, and rarely missed either the ISU men’s or women’s home games. Annette loved gardening, and visited gardens all over the world. She was an active member of the Casco Bay Gardening Club.
Annette delighted in seeing the wonders of the world, and often accompanied her husband when traveling on research and teaching excursions. She lived with her family in London, England, in 1977, where she enjoyed the world-class theater so readily available there. She often saw two and occasionally three plays in a single day. When she wasn’t in the theater, she was taking classes at the City Lit just off Tottenham Court Road, where they specialized in English and British literature.
In addition to the countries in Great Britain, she traveled throughout Europe and the northern Mediterranean. Some of her favorite places were New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Kenya, Tanzania, Costa Rica, Russia, Brazil and, of course, Florida, Hawaii and California. She also loved to visit Washington, D.C., and New York City.
She was preceded in death by: her mother and father; and by three older brothers, Hampton, Rex and Nedd McArthur.
Annette is survived by: her husband of 59 years, Wayne A. Rowley of Saco; a daughter, Kimberly Gillingham (Peter) of Arundel; two sons, David Scott Rowley of Atlanta and Val Stuart Rowley (Marilyn) of Concord, Ohio; two grandsons, Austin Carr of Auburn and Matthew Carr of Windham; a step-grandson, Josh Janeck of Concord, Ohio; two brothers, Gregg McArthur (Marlene) of Riverton, Utah, and Kent McArthur (Louise) of Ogden, Utah; a sister, Mary Kukahiko (Glenn) of Orem, Utah; and numerous nieces and nephews.
A memorial service will be held at 4 p.m. Thursday, March 24, at Unitarian Church on School Street in Saco. Following the memorial service, a reception will be held at the Inn in the Atlantic Heights Retirement Center on Harbor Street in Saco. Another memorial service will be held in the late spring or early summer in Ames, Iowa.
Annette will be laid to rest in the Iowa State University Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, gifts may be made to the Ames, Iowa, High School Foundation’s Annette McArthur Rowley Scholarship Fund.
Please visit advantageportland.com to sign Annette’s guestbook and leave memories and condolences for the family.
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