For years, the home where Kelvin and Jane Bowles resided near Smith Mountain Lake was described as “the first house on the left.”
“It’s not the first house on the left anymore,” Jane said Thursday with a laugh.
Well, Salem Memorial Ballpark is no longer a new facility either. But a minor-league baseball team is the chief tenant and Kelvin Bowles at the top of the list as a main reason why the Salem Red Sox are in town.
In 1985, Bowles bought the Salem Professional Club at a time when local leaders were faced with the prospect of losing the franchise because of inadequate facilities.
The Franklin County native convinced city leaders to build the 6,300-seat baseball stadium that opened in 1995 and currently serves as the home of the Boston Red Sox’s Class A affiliate.
Bowles, who died in 2022, was honored posthumously Thursday with a large plaque that will go on permanent display inside the stadium.
“Kelvin Bowles saved baseball in the Valley and it’s that simple,” Salem Director of Communications Mike Stevens said to a gathering that included members of Bowles’ family, civic officials and other onlookers. “Yes, he needed help from Council, from [former mayor] Jim Taliaferro to business people to professional people. He needed a lot of help, but Kelvin Bowles was the savior of baseball.”
Bowles paid $175,000 in 1985 to purchase the local baseball franchise, which was known at the time as the Redbirds, later as the Buccaneers and Avalanche and currently the Red Sox.
At the time, Bowles was working as a scout for the Montreal Expos, one of four Major League franchises where he worked for evaluating baseball talent. Bowles was awarded a World Series ring for his work with the MLB champion Florida Marlins in 1997.
“I knew a couple of people who were interested in buying the team, but they couldn’t put the deal together,” Bowles told Salem Magazine in 2014. “I asked my boss in Montreal if it would be a conflict. He called me back and said, ‘Go for it.’ Two weeks later, the deal was done.”
Bowles, who first built his empire as a successful cable television entrepreneur, owned the club for 21 years during a period when the Buccaneers (1987) and Avalanche (2001) won Carolina League pennants.
The Roanoke Times reported that Bowles attempted to sell the team in 1994 but the Salem City Council delayed voting on a lease to the prospective new owner. The paper reported that the Carolina League rejected the sale, Bowles elected to keep the team and the city decided to pony up for a new ballpark, moving up the street from old Municipal Field.
Bowles eventually sold the team to Hardball Capital, an investment group, for $8 million, according to a Roanoke Times source.
Bowles’ son, Brian, served as the minor-league club’s finance director for a brief time, as former Salem city councilman Bill Jones recalled Thursday.
“As we all know, Kelvin was very tight with the dollar,” Jones said. “That’s why he profited the way he did. He taught me a lot about business, surrounding yourself with the right people.
“One year the costs ran up a little bit. Brian was in charge of finances and said, ‘I don’t know how Dad’s going to take this.’ Dad didn’t take it too well. We sat down and worked it out. He respected everyone around him but he demanded respect.”
Bowles was born in the Snow Creek section of Franklin County. Upon graduation from Franklin County High School, he served in the U.S. Air Force.
Brian Bowles recounted a humorous baseball-related story about his father’s time in the service.
“When he was in the Air Force, there was a general and his last name was Bowles,” Brian said. “Well, everybody thought [Kelvin] was his kid. The Air Force had a baseball team and they asked [Kelvin] to coach it, and [everyone] said he was asked to coach it because he was the son of the general. They weren’t related, but he didn’t say a word.”
During a six-month deployment at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey in 1963, he found himself working beside an 18-year-old enlistee from Macon, Georgia, in an accounting office.
Soon thereafter, Bowles and Jane were betrothed and off to start a new life.
“The window of our meeting was small, six months or we probably would have never met,” Jane Bowles said Thursday. “He was getting out [of the service]. It was either, I’ve got to latch onto him or he’s going to be gone. Back then if you got married they’d let you out. So we went to the justice of the peace and got married.
“I had to get signed permission. My mother had already passed away. My father, I didn’t know where he was. I had to hunt him down to get a signed permission to get married. We got married on the way back to Virginia.”
The marriage lasted 58 years until his death Aug. 29, 2002.
“He was Franklin County, born and raised in Franklin County. I’m a city girl,” she said. “This was all different to me. Kelvin was from a big family. There were 12 [children]. That was different for me. Kelvin was strong in his personality, and I’m not. We worked out pretty good.”
Salem’s civic leaders spent considerable time preparing for Thursday morning’s ceremony.
“At first I thought that we had drug our feet to get this done for Kelvin after his passing, but it has appeared, as things do, in the last week that we were right on time,” Stevens said. “Not only is it the 30th anniversary of the opening of the stadium, but tomorrow would have been Kelvin’s 86th birthday.”
The inscription on the commemorative plaque highlights many of Bowles’ professional accomplishments:
*Scouted for Pirates, Expos, Marlins and Red Sox.
*Served as the Carolina League Vice President for eight years.
*Appointed to Minor League Board of Trustees for eight years.
*Helped create the Salem-Roanoke Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991.
*Inducted into Salem-Roanoke Baseball Hall of Fame in 2001.
To fans in Salem, who can attend the Red Sox’s final 2025 series at home next week beginning Monday, baseball is Bowles’ gift to the Roanoke Valley.
“But baseball [is] here, and all of us are here today because of Kelvin Bowles,” Jones said. “The man saw a vision and followed through on the vision. The quality of life, it’s hard to put a dollar on because of Kelvin Bowles.”
