John Alvin Fowler, Jr.

John Alvin Fowler, Jr. passed away on August 1, 2026, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, while traveling home from Colombia. He was 67 years old.

John is survived by his sons, Zachary Fowler and John Alvin Fowler III, and his grandson, John Alvin Fowler IV. He was preceded in death by his beloved sister, Kitty, and his parents. He is also survived by his brother, Matt.

John grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, alongside Kitty and Matt, but his family roots reached much farther south. The Fowler family has called the area around Mullins, South Carolina, home for generations, and John will ultimately return there to rest alongside his mother, father, and generations of Fowlers who came before him.

For more than 30 years, John owned and operated Fowler’s Glass. His work took him throughout Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Arlington, and wherever else someone was willing to accept one of his bids. He installed storefronts, rehabilitated buildings, employed many people, and left behind work that remains visible throughout the region.

Anyone who rode through Washington with John was also likely to receive the same bit of local history every single time: a reminder of the staircase from The Exorcist. No matter how many times you had already seen it, John was going to point it out again.

John also built two homes during his life and approached work with an intensity that rarely allowed him—or anyone around him—to remain idle for very long. Work was not simply something he did. It was one of the principal ways he understood life, responsibility, success, and himself.

His son Zach worked alongside him in Fowler’s Glass for 10 years. They spent countless days working side by side, creating memories that Zach will carry with him for the rest of his life.

John’s relationships with his sons were each different and, like John himself, sometimes complicated. He believed strongly in hard work, toughness, independence, and pushing his children to become capable adults. He attended sporting events, brought his sons into the family business from an early age, and had strong ideas about what they should become.

John Alvin Fowler III’s relationship with his father changed considerably over the course of his life. John was deeply proud of his son’s service in the United States Marine Corps and of the independent life he built afterward. Their relationship was not always simple, but his father’s influence—both intentional and unintentional—played an undeniable role in shaping the man his son became.

For the final six or seven years of his life, John made his home in Colombia. There, he developed friendships and became known by many for his generosity. He regularly gave money, helped people who needed assistance, and enjoyed being able to make a meaningful difference in the lives of people around him.

Money occupied an unusual place in John’s life. He loved business, investing, markets, and the pursuit of financial success. He could be intensely focused on making it, protecting it, risking it, and, at other times, giving it away. For John, money was never merely numbers on a statement. It represented independence, accomplishment, security, possibility, and sometimes the ability to change someone else’s circumstances.

John believed in God and remained connected to his faith throughout his life. Like many people, his relationship with faith was personal and existed alongside all of the complexities and contradictions that made him who he was.

John loved music, particularly Al Green and Johnny Cash. One of his favorite songs was Johnny Cash’s “One Piece at a Time.”

The song became part of the memories shared between John and Zach, who remembers listening to it with his father in John’s truck. For Zach, the song has become a fitting metaphor for life: you keep moving forward, one piece at a time, and eventually you get there. Those memories of riding together and listening to that song will remain with him.

John also stood beside Zach during several difficult periods in the final year and a half of his life, including times when Zach struggled with his mental health. His support during those periods meant a great deal to his son and became an important part of their relationship near the end of John’s life.

John could be generous, stubborn, driven, difficult, funny, intensely independent, and entirely himself. He lived quickly, worked constantly, traveled widely, took risks, accumulated stories, and rarely did anything halfway.

His life cannot be reduced to a handful of perfect words, and those who knew him knew that John was never particularly interested in being simple.

He leaves behind two sons whose lives were shaped by him in very different ways, a grandson who carries his name forward, family throughout the Fowler line, decades of work still standing throughout the Mid-Atlantic, and countless stories that will continue to be told by the people who knew him.

After years spent working, traveling, building, investing, and finding his way to places far from where he began, John will now return to Mullins, South Carolina.

The family will receive friends from 12:30 until 1:30 p.m., Friday, August 28, 2026, at Meares Funeral Home in Mullins with interment to follow at Cedardale Cemetery at 2:00 p.m.

May John Alvin Fowler Jr. rest in peace.

An online guestbook is available at www.mearesfh.com.

Meares Funeral Home has been given the honor of serving the family.