BOWERS BEAUTIFUL. The firtst and only known Miss Romblon, Isabel C. Bowers, who participated in the 2nd National Beauty Contest of the Manila Carnival, won by Luisa Marasigan.
Little is known about
Romblon's first and only representative to the
Miss Philippines Beauty Contest of the
Manila Carnival--American
mestiza,
Isabel C. Bowers.
There were several
Bowers who came to the Philippines at the time of the American conquest who may have been her relatives: .two
Thomasites with the
Bowers surname came with the first batch of
American teachers to the Islands in the early 1900s--
Benjamin F. Bowers
(assigned in Antique) and
George Bowers (assigned in Batangas). They could very
well be Isabel's forebears.
Isabel was related somehow to
Brig. Gen. Clarence H. Bowers (1880-1943), the
Philippine Constabulary head and a former superintendent of the
Philippine Military Academy who married
Constancia Madrilejos of
Romblon, daughter of
Bonifacio Marron Madrilejos and
Vicenta Manalon Maculang, on 31 August 1906.
This
Bowers couple had two children,
Elizabeth Maud Constance and
Lejuna Bowers. (N.B. It is interesting to note that
"Isabel" is the Spanish equivalent of
Elizabeth; could she be one and the same person? Mother
Constancia anglicized her name to
"Constance Bowers" after her marriage to
Clarence. In any event, this
Elizabeth Maud Bowers returned to the U.S. in 1932 and took up
Industrial Design at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pennsylvania. She married
Engr. John Rice, had two daughters and eventually became a noted name in industrial and graphic design, one of only few American women to achieve such feat in a field dominated by men.)
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