Obituary: William Rowe: Anthropology professor, founder of Open Arms of Minnesota

The cakes are often chocolate, frosted and decorated with delicate sugared leaves. For many recipients, especially those who are isolated and low-income, it may be the only birthday gift they will receive, delivered to their door along with regular nutritious meals as they battle life-threatening or chronic illnesses.

It's a tradition that started through the loving care of Bill Rowe.

Founder of the nonprofit Open Arms of Minnesota, Rowe cooked and hand-delivered meals to friends living with AIDS starting in the mid-1980s. As his personal mission expanded into a full-fledged organization, he continued to take special note of birthdays by delivering cakes.

Rowe died in a nursing facility in Chicago on Feb. 16. He was 89.

The nonprofit organization is still celebrating clients' birthdays, though now it has a $2.5 million budget, 30 staff members and 5,000 volunteers. It delivers about 500,000 meals annually, including to people with cancer, multiple sclerosis and other diseases.

While cooking elaborate meals was Rowe's way of showing his love, friends and family said, he led a life that was far from quiet domesticity.

Raised in Southern California, he was drafted into the Army near the end of World War II and served in Japan after the war ended. He then went to college, got married and enrolled in the London School of Economics, where he studied cultural and social movements. He and his wife crossed the English Channel in 1952 and drove a Ford Anglia 4,000 miles to Mumbai, India, where he helped build a school.

Rowe then taught at Duke University and he and his wife traveled to Yugoslavia, adopting a daughter, Julia. The three lived in Papua New Guinea in a thatched house while Rowe joined a field study.

In 1968, he was recruited to the University of Minnesota's Anthropology department, where he retired in 1995. He and his wife adopted a son, James, and Rowe taught classes through the years on Marxism, South Asian culture, gender and the anthropology of AIDS. He divorced in 1973 and came out as gay shortly afterward.

Friend Phil Willkie took a class from Rowe in the 1970s and the two became friends.

"He was wearing leather from head to toe and chain smoking," Willkie recalled. "He was real radical. I was attracted to him socially from the get-go."

Willkie said Rowe was outspoken and a member of the Communist party, though he was shy in some situations, too. Rowe had a "huge amount of energy," Willkie said.

Daughter Julia Rowe, a special education teacher, said her father raised her with a sense of social justice that he learned as a young man when he saw Japanese-Americans rounded up and sent to internment camps.

"His passion for justice and equity … impacted who I am in that way," she said.

Radinsky said his father-in-law inspired respect.

"He was an anthropologist, but he might just as well have been a social worker … he might just as well have been a therapist. And he might just as well have become a chef," Radinsky said.

A celebration of Rowe's life will be held at Open Arms this summer.