Peter Lowenstein

Peter Lowenstein, a world traveler and pilot, died at home on Lake Montauk on May 4. He was 83 and had been ill with heart disease for two years.

Mr. Lowenstein was born in Offenbach, Germany, on Feb. 4, 1935, the only child of the former Edith Kahn and Ludwig Lowenstein. When he was 3, he and his mother were sent to a holding camp in France and his father was detained in Germany. They were able to escape in 1938, going first to Belgium and then to the United States in 1941, settling in Manhattan’s Washington Heights. His family said they became “American overnight, never speaking German, and embracing the new culture and language.”

  Mr. Lowenstein reportedly learned to fly in order to shorten the trip between New Jersey and Montauk. He owned a six-seat Beechcraft Bonanza A36 and joined Angel MedFlight, a program that took children with cancer to treatment centers. 

 Before getting his pilot’s license, Mr. Lowenstein had been certified as a scuba diver instructor and certified his two sons in the skill, which had helped him overcome claustrophobia.

After his first son, Alexander Lowenstein, died in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988,  Mr. Lowenstein and his wife focused their energies on the preciousness of life.

Mr. Lowenstein went to public school as a child and graduated from George Washington High School. He was a member of Mensa. He received a bachelor’s degree in leather chemistry at Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, and he and his father ran a leather business until they discovered plastics. He built a number of companies, including the Renolit corporation, which manufactures and distributes high-quality plastic film. He was the firm’s president from 1968 to 1998, when he retired and moved with his family to Montauk full time. Fairly early in the Vietnam War, Mr. Lowenstein was an Army specialist, able to remain stateside.

In 1965, he met Suse Meissner, an artist, at a dinner party. His family said he “was smitten right away. She needed some time: 24 hours.” They saw each other every day and married six months later in Montauk. She survives.

“She fell in love with his stability, trustworthiness, and sense of adventure,” the family said. They lived in Mendham, N.J., until moving to Montauk, where he was a member of Concerned Citizens of Montauk, the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee, the Montauk Pilots Association, and the Children’s Cancer Fund.

Mr. Lowenstein and his wife traveled, often with their sons, through the United States, Europe, Asia, the Pacific Islands, Cuba, and the Caribbean. His favorite place to go and take photographs, a hobby he enjoyed, was Papua New Guinea. The list of places he had not been to was short, his family said.

But no matter where he went, his family said Montauk remained his favorite place and the friends he and his wife made there became their family. He was “known for his kindness, generosity, old-school manners, and sense of humor,” his family said.

In addition to his wife, his son, Lucas Lowenstein of Mountain Lakes, N.J., and three grandchildren survive.

The family will celebrate his life on June 2 at Rick’s Crabby Cowboy Cafe in Montauk, from 1 to 5 p.m. They have suggested memorial donations to East End Hospice, P.O. Box 1048, Westhampton Beach 11978, or eeh.org.