2015 - Zola Lowery Crowell

2015 UBEOC Recipient Arthur O. Eve Education and Community Service Award

UBEOC Class of 1975

“The Buffalo EOC gave me the courage to move beyond the falsehood,” says Ms. Zola Lowery Crowell upon reflecting how she was placed in special education classes from first through 12th grade. Elaborating, Ms. Crowell states she never underwent any formal learning assessment, but one thing she knew for certain was how to live with a stigma. That is, until she came to the Buffalo EOC. “The Buffalo EOC never let me buy into that label.” 

Ms. Zola Lowery Crowell.

“EOC gave me the courage to move beyond the falsehood.”

Ms. Crowell grew up in Andalusia, Alabama and Niagara Falls, N.Y. and lived in Buffalo from 1967-2011.During this period, she worked as a U.S. Postal Service Night Distribution Clerk in Buffalo and then briefly in Manhattan, enrolled at UBEOC and earned her High School Equivalency Diploma and then took College Preparation courses; worked at Millard Fillmore Hospital as a Nursing Aide and then as a Secretary in the Open Heart Intensive Care Unit; attended Millard Fillmore and Empire State Colleges, and worked for 25 years as an Administrative Assistant at  Buffalo Veteran’s Hospital.  Ms. Crowell attests: “UBEOC was my lifeline and because UBEOC believed in me, I developed my own resolve to succeed and help others in need.”

Ms. Crowell's commitment to community has never wavered since. She has been active in the Niagara Falls Chapter of the Links, Incorporated; the Association of Black Social Workers; the Harriet Tubman 300’s; the Black Pioneers of the Niagara Frontier; the American Business Women’s Association, and the First Shiloh Baptist Church.  Presently, she is a member of the Charlotte Crown Jewels Chapter of the Links Incorporated, a venue through which she attended the United Nations Gala and met Secretary General Kofi Annan and Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Embracing what “lifeline” truly means, Ms. Crowell believes that a person’s past influences their future. Genealogy has become her true passion. She has been recognized by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. for her gift of her genealogical manuscript of her great-great grandmother, Charity Butler, who was born into slavery in the 1850s. She has also received recognition for her research from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Ms. Crowell retired after 30 years in the federal government and resides in Charlotte, N.C. She is the mother of Ingrid Guess, a Johnson C. Smith University graduate working in Information Technology, and the grandmother of Terrance, a first grader who reads at the fourth grade level.

Alumni Affairs and Student Development Office