A year or so ago I went looking for Mike Howard. I heard he was living at Dusty Trails, that he was sick and doctors had cut off his foot.
I was hoping to write the story, “Santa Claus Is A Man With One Foot Who Lives in Public Housing.”
A big guy with enough fluffy white hair and beard and bonhomie to make a convincing Saint Nick, Howard served as our town’s Santa, grinning and waving atop a firetruck coming down Main Street in the Christmas parade for so many years that kids growing up here knew no other Claus.
I liked the story’s “real Santa” angle because anyone paying attention knows that charity doesn’t start with a person who owns a factory, even a fictional toy factory at the North Pole staffed by cheerful elves. Charity comes from another poor bastard like you who understands need.
Like a guy in public housing who just lost his foot.
Howard answered his door when I knocked but he wasn’t talking. He wasn’t interested in a feature story on the real Santa Claus or one that reported that a beloved character in our town was struggling.
Maybe I asked him on a bad day or maybe he didn’t want kids to know that Santa has hard times, too.
All I knew about Howard was that he liked to fish and to smoke cigarettes. I was curious what else he’d done and what he thought of the world. He seemed to me an interesting, solitary character abiding on his own terms. It’s a type that shows up in Haines, often finding a quiet home along its margins.
Thursday’s memorial for Howard at the American Legion Hall didn’t shed much light on the real Santa Claus. Howard grew up in Palm Springs, Calif., the second of five kids born to a disabled vet, his sister said, a star athlete in football and track whose promise was cut short by a teenage car accident that crushed his shoulder.
Howard underwent “about 30” surgeries and was disabled, she said. For years down south he worked as a short-order cook or chef but he also lived as a nomad, including as a traveling Deadhead.
Howard never married. He arrived here 20-plus years ago to help a friend whose mother lived here and was struggling. When the friend and his mother moved south, Howard stayed. Friends testified that Howard was good with dogs and “gave great hugs.”
As the town’s longtime newspaper reporter, I covered Howard once. It came during the court sentencing of Freddie Anderson, a young dad convicted of sexually molesting his infant daughter.
Understandably, the news of Anderson’s conviction weeks earlier had made him a friendless pariah. Just before sentencing came a time for him to present character witnesses, anyone who might testify on his behalf. The only person to come forward was Mike Howard.
Howard said he had no knowledge of Anderson’s crimes but that he knew Anderson as a decent person and friend who was kind and helped others. His short statement, a defense of the character of a man who had committed a most heinous crime, stands out as the most courageous act I’ve witnessed here in 38 years.
In our tiny town where only a thin line separates popular opinion from mob rule, Howard summoned the might to challenge the thinking that Anderson was a monster. Instead, Howard said, Anderson was a good person who had committed a terrible crime.
Love the sinner but hate the sin is a lesson Jesus taught but few of us absorb, particularly when the crime is horrific and the sinner is someone we know – or think we know.
Howard, who was not a churchgoer, apparently took it to heart.
By the standards of our culture, Howard lived an unremarkable life. Only about 30 people turned out for his memorial service. But at least once in his life he stepped into grace in a way that few people ever do.