TAPS FOR HOWARD – Another of our long ago friends answered the final roll call Sunday…Howard C. Lewis, the West Ironton boy who sang with the old Spanish-American War brass band died in Detroit where he had made his home the past 40 years…He was the first outdoor soloist ever to sing with an Ironton band…
It all started in 1914 when the city held a big street festival called the Apple Show…Howard Lewis played the clarinet, having taken lessons from Judge George C. Hugger…His friends at the Elks Club, which he joined in 1913, encouraged him to sing solos with the band…He sang in the Elk minstrel shows…As a soloist with the band, he became well-known throughout the Tri-State.
During the First World War, Howard Lewis played with the Navy Band in Washington and elsewhere under the direction of John Phillip Sousa, the famous bandmaster…At the time of his 1917 enlistment, Mr. Howard Lewis was a skilled machinist at the Ironton engine plant…Following his discharge in 1919, he went to Detroit with the Dodge Motor Co., where he was employed for 40 years as a dashboard instrument panel supervisor…Although absent from this city for two-score years, he always held a warm spot in his heart for old friends here and Howard Lewis was a subscriber for an Ironton newspaper for many years…
In recent years, his sister, Mrs. Winifred Winkler, 513 North Fourth Street, the only remaining member of the family mailed him Soliloquy columns each week and his letters always told how he enjoyed reading about Ironton as he remembered it when a boy.
THE DRAFT BOARD appointed by President Woodrow Wilson were W. E. Massie, who later became chief of police, H. M. Edwards, who was a school teacher at Hanging Rock – studying law at the time – and John A. Mohr, a carpenter…W. Grant Ward, a former sheriff, was appointed to fill the vacancy when Mr. Edwards entered officers’ training school.
The same letter mentions that the city only has 17 practicing lawyers today, and lists 25 attorneys, active at the time of the Armistice in 1918…Those listed were J. L. Anderson, L. R. Andrews, Jed B. Bibbee, P. C. Booth, L. K. Cooper, E. E. Corn, Ezra Dean, E. V. Dean, Wayne L. Elkins, H. M. Edwards, O. E. Irish, T. A. Jenkins, A. R. Johnson, Dan C. Jones, Geo. W. Keye, A. J. Layne, J. W. Mahoney, Fred G. Roberts, A. C. Robinson, F. A. Ross, Waite M. Russell, Louis J. Schneider, Thos. D. Shirkey, Erle E. Stewart, and John O. Yates.
Written by Charles Collettt
Huntington Newspaper – April 26, 1960
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