It was built in 1994, the same year that its identical twin, the Rufus Lewis Branch, was erected out on the Mobile Highway at the head of Air Base Blvd. Tit for tat. Step into one of these and you feel like you have entered a fortress. What has our society come to? Ed Lowder, the namesake, was an Auburn grad,county extension agent, then a WW II artillery captain. After the war he founded the Alabama Farm Bureau; everyone over 50 and who grew up in Alabama will remember the notorious TV ads, “Momma! The Farm Bureau man is here”. The Farm Bureau became the ALFA Insurance of today, and the recently demised Colonial Bank had somewhat the same roots. Lowder died in 1987. I think this should have been a bigger branch; how about you?

-Charles Humphries