In this space just a couple of weeks ago I wrote about how it seems so often that deaths come in threes.
When I wrote that piece about Judge James Carlow it was my hope that my thought on death coming in threes would not come to pass, but it seems that it might hold true.
After losing my friend Ronny Looney, and then the Judge, this week came the third of my friends to go on to heaven with the passing of Dr. Ken Howard.
Dr. Howard simply may have been the most intelligent person I have ever had the privilege to know and spend time with.
He would often come to my office here in New Boston and we would chat about various topics. He also wrote a weekly article for the Tribune for some time where he shared his seemingly limitless knowledge of history with our readers.
One of my favorite memories of Dr. Howard was the day he visited me at the Tribune and gave me a Russian military hat. Another time he gave me a Russian winter hat complete with fur trim.
Another time he presented me with a copy of his invitation to the state dinner that he was to attend with President John F. Kennedy. That dinner was never held as it was planned for the day of JFK’s assassination in Dallas.
But the most valuable thing he ever gave me was a glimpse of his amazing life and the wisdom that he had gleaned from a life that spanned from days of abject poverty to days working as a spy for the U.S. Defense Department.
After being given a top security clearance he was attached to a military unit of the Defense Intelligence Agency. There, after training in Washington, he traveled extensively in Central and South America. Fortunately, he had not had an advisor in college and decided to take a lot of courses in Spanish. This stood him in good stead then and later. He had been assigned the task of trying to find Che Guevara, among other activities. Che was the second in command in the Cuban Revolution of 1959. He was down in South America trying to stir up a revolution.
We published a story about the life of Dr. Howard in the August 2019 issue of our quarterly magazine Crossroads. It is a very detailed story about his life and includes things like his work with the Soviet economy and literary works that he had published in Russia.
The story is a worthwhile read and if you go to the website at netxcrossroads. com and go to the archive that contains that August 2019 issue, I promise you it is a story worth your time.
(Also, the cover of that magazine issue is a picture of my firstborn grandson Isaac, so that makes it even more special.)
Suffice to say, Dr. Ken Howard was a man that lived a life that was interesting, special and worthy of note.
But, in my opinion, the most important thing that Dr. Howard achieved in his lifetime was his prolific work in spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I would say, only God Himself knows the number of lives that were touched and changed because of the efforts of Dr. Howard.
The group he was working with introduced it to other Christian groups, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian and the Orthodox Church so that the technology pretty well permeated the country behind the Iron Curtain.
There was no way to count the effect in terms of what was produced, but they announced that millions of pieces of printed Christian literature were produced prior to the opening up of the USSR.
He spent years smuggling the Bible into Soviet Russia and he shared his knowledge of the Word here in our neck of the woods too. He taught classes at First Baptist DeKalb and he also gave his time and knowledge to First Baptist Texarkana.
Mission trips to South America also filled his days and his devotion to spreading not just the Word of God but also the very essence of what it means to be a Christian are just two of the things that standout to me about who Dr. Howard really was for the entirety of his life.
Dr. Howard shared with me that as he drew near to the end of his life journey he looked back in awe of all the things that the Lord had allowed him to be a part of and do. He said it proved once again the words of Psalms 37:5 which read, “Commit thy ways unto the Lord, trust also in Him: and He shall bring it to pass.”
I can say today with all confidence that Dr. Ken Howard did commit his ways unto the Lord he loved and that the Lord in return made many things come to pass for him.
I can also say with full confidence that I likely will never know a man as interesting, intelligent or thought provoking as Dr. Howard was for me.
He was simply a once in a lifetime kind of man. I have often thought about his stories of life, those we printed, and those that he asked me not to print.
I can only hope that my life leaves a similar footprint. Rest easy my friend.
