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Obituary
The shelves of her Dade City store were stacked with reduced price and dented groceries.
By CHASE SQUIRES, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 31, 2003
DADE CITY -- The founder of N Seventh Street's home of scratch and dent groceries, Pamela "Tin Can Pam" Bowe, died Tuesday (Jan. 28, 2003) at her home after a brief illness. She was 46.
Mrs. Bowe opened Tin Can Pam's in 1994, sinking everything she and her family owned into the business.
"It was the scariest thing I'd ever done," she said last year. "It was like jumping off a bridge with my whole family tied to me."
The store was a success, offering shoppers shelves stacked with discounted and dented groceries and an oddball collection of famous name, and sometimes no-name, brands.
Mrs. Bowe last year, before her illness, recalled the work it took to break into the discount grocery business. She said she had to learn how to deal with distributors and how to handle the unpredictable variety of unusual items she often received. Stocking the store often was a juggling act; she could never be sure what would be on the delivery truck.
She said her biggest satisfaction came from knowing she was helping families stretch their grocery budget.
"I have people tell me, "Before you were here, we could eat. But now we eat better,' " Mrs. Bowe said last year. "It makes you feel like you're doing something, helping families."
Her daughter, Patricia Bloxsom, said Mrs. Bowe's husband, David, and the family will continue to run the store in her mother's honor.
"She used to call me "Tin Can Patty,' " Bloxsom said.
She recalled her mother as selfless.
"She was a very loving, caring person," Bloxsom said. "My mom always thought of everybody else before herself."
Bloxsom said her mother fought skin cancer in 2001, but doctors thought she had beaten it.
"They said she would have a one in a million chance of it coming back," Bloxsom said.
In late November, she suddenly lost sight in one eye. She learned she had inoperable brain cancer.
To the end, Mrs. Bowe dreamed of returning to work, her daughter said. She kept her illness quiet in the community and fought to get better, her daughter said. She also hung on to her sense of humor, joking with family members and enjoying their company well into January.
Bloxsom said the store will live on.
"This store has always been my mom's," she said. "This was her baby. This was her dream. She loved this store."
Mrs. Bowe was a native of West Virginia and moved as a child to Valrico. She graduated from Brandon Senior High School and moved to Dade City in 1986. She was a member of Amelia Baptist Church.
She is survived by her husband, David; a daughter, Patricia Bloxsom; a son, Walker; her parents, Sam and Pat Chapman of Brooksville; two sisters, Victoria Chapman, of Gainesville, and Rebecca Rocha, of Salisbury, N.C.; her grandmother, Ruth Reed, of Brooksville; and many other relatives. She was preceded in death by a son, Robert L. Patton.
Visitation is from 7 to 9 tonight at Whitfield Funeral Home, 5008 Gall Blvd., Zephyrhills, with the funeral at 11 a.m. Saturday at Amelia Baptist Church in 14745 Bellamy Brothers Blvd., Darby, with the Rev. Tom Craine officiating. Burial will follow at Mount Zion Cemetery, and a dinner will be held afterward for family and friends at the Amelia Baptist Church Fellowship Hall.