Jan Bowen Share

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Jan Bowen has been an instru­men­tal part of the Mar­i­on com­mu­ni­ty just in her short time of liv­ing here. After retir­ing from a 35-year career with the Nov­el­is alu­minum plant in Terre Haute, she made the move to Mar­i­on in 2015 to be close to family.

Short­ly after get­ting set­tled, Bowen con­tin­ued her involve­ment with Kids Hope, a nation­al orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to help­ing youth by pair­ing church­es with schools. Col­lege Wes­leyan Church pairs with Frances Slocum Ele­men­tary School and men­tors stu­dents while assist­ing them with stud­ies. She has been vol­un­teer­ing for Kid’s Hope for about ten years now.

Bowen is active in her neigh­bor­hood and serves as pres­i­dent of the Garfield Neigh­bor­hood Asso­ci­a­tion. She said she felt the need to get involved short­ly after a shoot­ing inci­dent in 2016. She has since led and helped lead efforts to make her neigh­bor­hood safer, clean­er, and more friend­ly. She even took her com­mit­ment with neigh­bor­hoods to the next lev­el by join­ing groups ded­i­cat­ed to improv­ing prop­er­ty main­te­nance city­wide, and enforc­ing account­abil­i­ty among prop­er­ty own­ers. One is devel­op­ing the Neigh­bor­hood Preser­va­tion Ordi­nance, and the oth­er is focused on the Vacant & Aban­doned Build­ing Ordi­nance, both of which are near­ing approval.

One big project with­in the Garfield Neigh­bor­hood Asso­ci­a­tion was the revi­tal­iza­tion of Barnes Park. Bowen assist­ed with plan­ning the place­ment of the play­ground equip­ment from the old go-kart track to coor­di­nat­ing vol­un­teers for projects to help revi­tal­ize the park. She has extend­ed her work in the park by improv­ing the berm, pulling weeds, and plant­i­ng flowers.

She is also work­ing to increase pub­lic knowl­edge in all neigh­bor­hoods of the large item trash pick-up ser­vices offered by Mar­i­on Utilities.