The challenge in summing up the active life and productive career of
any famous person is to put the important facts on record while steering a
respectful path between hagiography and recitation of his curriculum
vitae. We attempt to do this for our esteemed colleague and mentor, one of
Mesoamerica's last originals, Gareth W. Lowe (Figure 1). With his
death on March 8, 2004, in Tucson, Arizona, at age 82, Gareth left behind
a legacy that reaches far beyond his well-deserved international
reputation. Gareth spent 50 years of his life working in Mesoamerica,
principally on the Formative period in Chiapas, Mexico. He first went to
southern Mexico in 1953 as a crew member of the newly organized New World
Archaeological Foundation (NWAF). Two years later, the NWAF was rescued by
the sponsorship of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and
much later (in 1976) it became part of Brigham Young University. Gareth
served two stints as NWAF field director (1956–1959,
1961–1975), basically as de facto director, and finally served
officially as director from 1975 to 1987. In a real sense, Gareth was the
NWAF, and its successes and agenda were largely his. The story of one
cannot be understood without the other.