By Garrett Ray
Grassroots Editor
Winter 1991

Editor’s note: Kieth Howard died Feb. 3, 1996, at the age of 87.

When a grove of trees in Yellow Springs, Ohio, changed color this fall, Kieth and Margaret Howard may have paid special attention. After all, they are Kieth's trees.

A grateful community planted the grove — maples, oaks, dogwoods, ash — on the lawn of a local school to honor Howard, the longtime editor of the Yellow Springs News. The trees were planted in 1976 when Howard retired after 31 years as editor; he had spent most of those years as co-owner.

The honor was the highlight of “Kieth Howard Day” in Yellow Springs — a surprise tribute when the Howards returned from a trip to Europe sponsored by the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors.

His vigorous human rights leadership has won him other honors besides the special trees. Among them was the Eugene Cervi Award in 1982, given by the ISWNE to recognize a career of outstanding public service through community journalism.

When he received the Cervi Award almost 10 years ago, Howard was still writing occasionally for the News as editor emeritus. Since then, three strokes have severely restricted his activity. The most recent, two years ago, made it difficult for him to walk, speak and write. Conversation is slow, though the voice is still as warm and the laugh as hearty as ever. His mind is unaffected.

"He does read, though not a lot," notes Margaret, his wife for 51 years. "He enjoys television, keeps up on the news, and still does some correspondence with the peace committees."

Whatever sacrifices health requires Howard to make, the peace work is likely to be the last activity he will give up. Since World War II when he chose service as a conscientious objector, concerns for peace and justice have been central to his personal and professional life.

Born in Van Buren, Indiana, he got the unusual spelling of his first name from a father who took "i before e" as an inviolable rule. When his birth certificate showed his name as "Keith," his father went to Indianapolis to have the name officially recognized as "Kieth."

Howard met Margaret, also an Indiana native, when both attended Manchester College. Manchester is operated by the Church of the Brethren, a historically nonviolent denomination. After studying under an associate of Trygve Lie, first secretary general of the United States, Howard emerged a pacifist.

He began his newspaper career on the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer and continued with jobs in Logansport, Marion, and Huntington, Indiana, Margaret's home town. There, their college friendship developed into romance.

They were married by the time he interrupted his newspaper work to serve for three years in the Civilian Public Service, working mostly in mental hospitals, during World War II. "I was teaching elementary school," Margaret recalls. "I think he was paid $11 a month in the CPS."

In January of 1946, the Howards moved to Yellow Springs and he began his association with the News.

"I've known Kieth since I first came to Yellow Springs right out of high school," says James McKee, chief of police. "That was about the time he came here too. Margaret is a lot like Kieth; they both have been dedicated to fighting for human rights. In those days, the focus was civil rights. In the late 1940s in Yellow Springs, blacks were denied the theater. Kieth was involved in trying to open that up.

"A restaurant owner drew a knife on him when we were trying to integrate the restaurant in the '40s. He endured all kinds of threats and intimidation. But Kieth would question anything; there was nothing he was afraid to tackle."

Grassroots Editor once observed that a right wing organization, trying to "clean up subversion" in Yellow Springs, tried in the 1950s to buy Howard's paper at a huge profit to him. When he refused to sell, the right wing group started a competing paper. It lasted less than a year.

Howard had bought the News in 1949 in partnership with Kenneth Champney. Champney, who supervised production, says his partner was very intense and hard working. Yet many who know Howard see a gentleness that seems to belie his intensity.

"He was dedicated and genuinely concerned with the issues, yet he tried to deal with them in a peaceful manner," McKee says. "But don't get fooled by his low key manner. That's how he got things done. And his pen is very sharp."

Howard's tool for change was not just the editorial page, but the whole newspaper. He personally covered government meetings; local officials recognized him as a vigorous, observant watchdog.

Like many communities in the turbulent 1960s, Yellow Springs endured divisive demonstrations. "We had an issue, and we had to deal with it," McKee says. "Kieth covered it properly; his reporting was fair. He printed it just the way it was."

In recent years his life has been more placid but no less focused on human concerns. After retirement he served on the boards of trustees for the Friends Care Center, a nursing home organized by local Quakers; the county commission on the aging, the historical society, and a local nature preserve. He also has kept up his interest in peacemaking activities locally, nationally, and through the Presbyterian church.

One activity has endured his benign neglect, and any newspaper editor will understand.

"After his retirement he ignored all the boxes of stuff he brought home from the office," Margaret laments. "His den looks almost as bad as his office did. Finally, he has let me 'touch' some of the boxes, realizing that he'll never get to it."

The Howards also have enjoyed watching the growth of Kieth's trees — not only the original 25 trees, but also the Yellow Springs Tree Committee, which grew from the first planting day. Ten years after the original planting, 10 more trees were added; now the committee is planting trees throughout Yellow Springs.

From the perspective of his 83rd birthday on October 15, Howard may have found some remarkable symmetry in looking back at a fruitful and courageous life.

One of his first acts of courage was that decision to become a conscientious objector. And what was his first assignment for the Civilian Public Service in World War II?

He planted trees.