There is apparently a stockbroker gene in our branch of the Dow Family. Dow Investment Group was formed in the late 1930s when my uncle became a stockbroker in 1937 and my father, Cliff, Sr., joined him in 1939. Their younger brother came on board shortly after World War II. The fourth sibling of the first generation, a sister, served as a secretary to her three brothers some years later; and, during all my father’s years in the business, my mother, Louise, served him in a part-time secretarial capacity. After my dad passed away in 1974, my mom continued to work in our office for several years; and, until she passed away in 2003, at age eighty-eight, she was monitoring the financial news channel on CNBC and faxing us summaries of what was going on in the world – its economies, politics, business developments, and stock markets. Because she knew what we needed to know and transmitted it to us when we needed to know it, we considered our “Nannygrams” of more value to us than even our Wall Street Journal. 

When I joined the family business in 1962, the Dow Investment Group worked out of an office in Lewiston, Maine. Each of the other two first generation Dow brothers also had a son who came into the business in the years that followed; hence, we had three more Dow brokers for the second generation. As our own four boys went away to school, my wife, Barbara, also began to come into the office to assist us on a part-time basis. 

Our four sons, Cliff, Jr., Russell, Michael, and Bill, who constitute the third generation, each began to learn the business by helping out in the office during his college summer breaks. As each finished school, he decided he would give the brokerage business a try full-time, and each has been involved ever since.