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Wednesday, June 2, 2004

Family and Students 'Everything' to Teacher

By Barbara Armijo
Journal Staff Writer
    Camilla Rowe taught history with as much gusto and vivace as when she would play a show tune on the piano.
    Rowe, an award-winning speech, drama and U.S. history teacher at Eisenhower Middle School, died Sunday after battling cancer. She was 61.
    "She was so completely passionate about teaching and enjoyed every bit of her life," said Monica Faulkner, a childhood friend. "To her, family and students were everything."
    This week, some of her students had called to tell Rowe's family how much she meant to them, said Warren Rowe, Camilla's husband of 38 years.
    Rowe had won the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce's Crystal Apple Award for outstanding teaching in middle school. She spent one summer at Princeton University studying new teaching techniques to fulfill a fellowship she received.
    "Camilla had a very wide-ranging intellectual bent," Faulkner said. "She belonged to two book clubs. But I would say most of her energy was spent on her teaching."
    In addition to her husband, Rowe is survived by two daughters, Victoria Rowe and Adriana Roze, a son, Daniel Rowe; and a sister, Maria Dunn.
    Faulkner said Rowe grew up in Los Angeles where she went to an all-girls high school, and then went on to graduate first from Mount St. Mary's College, and then earned her master's in secondary education from the University of New Mexico.
    "Camilla inherited a beautiful voice from her mother, who was an opera singer," Faulkner said. "And then Camilla passed that on to her family. I think that house was always filled with beautiful music."
    Rowe participated in numerous productions with the Albuquerque Civic Light Opera Associations, now Musical Theatre Southwest.
    A Mass will be held today at the Aquinas Newman Center, 1815 Las Lomas NE, with burial at Gate of Heaven Cemetery.
    Rowe's family said contributions may be made in Rowe's name to the United Way of Central New Mexico for programs fighting domestic violence.