Doris L. Low, 88, research geologist and classical singer

Doris L. Low was a research geologist who specialized in the study of foraminifera, a type of single-celled organisms. (Courtesy Jackie baer)

The youngest child and only daughter of a Brockton family of musicians, artists, and engineers, Doris L. Low, who was born in Denver in 1920, had aspirations, too, starting with college. By 1938, however, her family could only afford the tuition of a two-year Boston secretarial school.

Ms. Low became a secretary, but the spirited and independent woman wouldn't allow herself to be limited, family and friends said. She would retire as an accomplished research geologist, specializing in the study of foraminifera, a type of single-celled organisms.

Ms. Low died of heart failure July 26 at Martha's Vineyard Hospital. She was 88 and a resident of Martha's Vineyard.

"She wanted to get into something that had some kind of depth," said her niece, Sharon Stein of Clarksville, N.Y. "And she was very interested in nature, so it was a very natural field for her."

It was secretarial work that provided Ms. Low an outlet to a new career. After a decade at a Brockton factory that manufactured lasts, the wooden forms used in shoe making and repair, Ms. Low joined the Cushman Laboratory for Foraminiferal Research in Sharon in the early 1950s.

The renowned foraminiferologist Joseph A. Cushman had recently died, and his assistant and successor, Ruth Todd, decided to move his collection to the US Geological Survey at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington. Ms. Low was asked to make the move as well.

There, she took night classes at American University and rose in the team to become physical science technician in geology.

According to Stein, it was Todd who said to Ms. Low, "There's more to you than what you're doing. Let's step up to the plate, you can be my assistant and I'll show you the way."

With her boss and mentor, Ms. Low coauthored a number of scientific papers during her career.

As Ms. Low began a new phase in her life, she also found herself at the epicenter of political and social change.

The experience was one that Ms. Low, quick-witted and outspoken, recalled fondly to Jackie Baer, her neighbor on the Vineyard for the past 20 years.

"She was there through the '60s and all of the Kennedy era," Baer said. "She would talk about that and, you know, the day of [President Kennedy's] funeral how they stood outside and watched the procession go by. It was a time in Washington that was just poignant."

In Washington, Ms. Low also found an outlet for her other passion, singing, in some of the city's largest churches. The daughter of a talented pianist, Ms. Low had sung in Boston church choirs and synagogues as a teenager and had taken vocal lessons from Gertrude Ehrhart, a premier voice coach, Baer said.

She became a professional contralto in 1942 when she was selected for an opening in a quartet that sang every weekend during the summer at the Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs.

When Ms. Low and Todd retired to the Vineyard in the early 1980s, where both women continued their research, Ms. Low joined the choir of St. Andrews Episcopal Church in Edgartown.

Too energetic to remain fully retired, for a number of years Ms. Low commuted 45 minutes by ferry to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

On the Vineyard, Ms. Low also enjoyed walking her Welsh corgis, reading poetry, and admiring the nature on the island.

A memorial service will be held today at 11 a.m. in St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Edgartown.