“They fooled me,” she said. “This is over the top.”
As the students walked in single-file toward the food line, they tossed their birthday cards into a cardboard box that Howard held. She knew about all their names. All of them knew her. Howard has two children, Thomas, 49, and Dana, 48, seven grandchildren, one great-grandchild and thousands more whose lives she has influenced.
In some parts of the city, Thomas Howard, who spent 11 seasons in the Major Leagues, including four with the Cincinnati Reds, said he’s simply known as “Mrs. Howard’s son.”
On Tuesday, I asked her if she could celebrate her birthday anywhere in the world, would she pick the school cafeteria, surrounded by students with icing smeared on their faces and hands. She flashed that ever present smile, a trademark of her family.
She needed the question clarified.
“Do you mean anywhere I could afford to be?” she asked. “That answer may be different.”
Then, just as quickly, she went back to collecting her cards. One kid walked by with nothing in his hand.
“I don’t have one,” he told her.
“Don’t you love kids?” she asked.
Then she turned serious. “They all have potential. Years ago, someone looked at me and saw the same thing, and that’s why I went into teaching. Sometimes even what you may consider the ‘bad kids’ end up being ‘successful kids.’”
Across the cafeteria, Anthony Comer, the first-year principal at Rosa Parks, watched as Howard worked the room. She has made his job a lot easier. You can’t be a successful school without people like Beverly Howard. She’s the glue that keeps the place together.
“When you talk about a dedicated person, man, you have to talk about Mrs. Howard,” he said. “There is not a better, more dedicated person than that.”
Peggy Kelly, secretary at Rosa Parks, said whenever she needs assistance, Howard is there, even before being asked. She gets there early or stays late, sometimes both. About the only thing that interrupts her seven-hour, five-day-a-week volunteer responsibility at that school, is her deeper commitment to her family, her elderly mother and her church, Bethel AME.
“If there truly is a saint, she’d be it,” Kelly said.
Thomas Howard stopped by the school and handed his mother a vase of flowers. They shared a long embrace. He wasn’t surprised to hear the compliments tossed his mother’s way. He’s been saying the same words for decades.
“She’s just as happy now as when I was these kids’ age,” he said looking around the cafeteria. “She’s doing exactly what she wants to do. She loves being around kids, planting more seeds.”
She has helped raise thousands of dollars to aide the school’s high percentage of economically disadvantaged students. The money has sponsored needy students going on field trips and purchased incentives for positive behavior. Four times a year, she organizes and runs family fun learning activities at the school. During these events, students learn alongside their parents while enjoying the educational games and refreshments. After completing the learning activities, each student gets to choose a free book purchased with funds raised by Howard.
Thomas Howard remembers attending his mother’s retirement party in the late 1990s.
At the time, he told her: “You can do anything that you want.”
And she responded: “This is what I want to do.”
Except for a few more gray hairs, nothing has changed. Beverly Howard is happy and that’s the best retirement.
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