
DATE: Tuesday, July 8, 1997                 TAG: 9707080291

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY GUY FRIDDELL, LANDMARK SPECIAL WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:  231 lines

HENRY E. HOWELL JR. 1920-1997 ACTIVIST AGAINST INJUSTICE SUCCUMBS TO LONG ILLNESS

Former Lt. Gov. Henry E. Howell Jr., who waged three grueling, all-out losing campaigns for governor of Virginia, died early Monday evening at home, surrounded by his family. The Norfolk native was 76 and had been battling cancer for some years.

Funeral services will be held at Christ and St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Norfolk at noon Friday.

Although he never won that first prize in Virginia politics, the irrepressible Howell changed the face of the state's politics through six major campaigns between 1969 and 1977.

``He stirred Virginia politics only like dynamite could have done in a pond,'' former Gov. Colgate W. Darden Jr. once said. ``He gave greater impetus to mass voting in Virginia and stirred people more than anybody in my lifetime.''

When a reporter once asked Howell what had kept him campaigning, Howell replied, ``A determination to finish what you start.''

In his career's high tide, running against former Gov. Mills E. Godwin Jr., Howell lost by only 15,000 votes, less than 1 percent of the more than 1 million votes cast.

``I lost by the hair of my chinny chin chin,'' he said later.

If Howell suffered setbacks in races for governor and was thwarted now and then as a legislator in the General Assembly, he achieved far-reaching victories in federal courts that brought more tax money and political power to Norfolk and its surrounding area. The state senator from Norfolk won suits against governors J. Lindsay Almond, Albertis Harrison and Godwin.

Spotting what he deemed an injustice, Howell would take the case to court as a volunteer lawyer without pay. In one suit, he recovered for Virginia's military-impacted localities, notably the cities of Hampton Roads, $11 million a year in federal aid to schools that the state had been diverting into its own coffers.

In another, the Virginia Supreme Court supported him in a suit against the State Corporation Commission's method of setting automobile insurance rates.

He argued before the U.S. Supreme Court for the abolition of the poll tax in Virginia when the court declared it unconstitutional.

He handled the suits that resulted in the reapportionment of the Virginia General Assembly on the one-man, one-vote principle. That gave Norfolk an additional Senate seat, which Howell sought and won in 1965 and 1967.

In one reform, he initiated legislation establishing a consumer protection division within the State Corporation Commission.

In the General Assembly, dominant conservative Democrats would sidetrack a Howell bill on occasion and then introduce it themselves in a subsequent session.

Fellow lawyers acknowledged his skill in moving a jury, but Howell spent much of his adult life in working a larger jury of 5 million citizens and seeking a broader verdict.

It started in 1949. A young lawyer in Norfolk, Howell was passing Miller-for-Governor headquarters on Granby Street when a friend, ``standing out in front of the headquarters like a clothing store salesman in the Depression days,'' asked him to work for Francis Pickens Miller, who was in a four-way race that included John S. Battle, Harry F. Byrd's candidate.

```I wasn't politically aware,'' Howell said, ``and I asked him why.'' The friend handed Howell a New York Times Sunday Magazine with an article on the Byrd Machine. ``It showed a rather monolithic, selective political process,'' Howell recalled.

How, Howell asked, could he help? He was assigned to Precinct 19, the briarpatch of Clerk of Court Billy Prieur, Byrd's lieutenant in Norfolk.

So a battle that lasted three decades was joined.

Howell's father, a lumber salesman in Norfolk, moved shortly after Henry was born in Richmond to start his own firm. The elder Howell joined Camp Manufacturing Co. in Franklin and worked two years opening territory in New Jersey, then returned to Norfolk and closed his career as Camp's assistant sales manager.

``My father made a living because he was a good salesman,'' Howell recalled. ``We didn't have any extra money, but there was never any talk about it. A second-hand bicycle was all I wanted anyway.

``It was a very loving family. I didn't hear any gossip or know any prejudice in our home. My aunt lived with us, and so I was an only child with two mothers, and it was always, `What do you want to do, son?' There were no limitations. If I had said I wanted to study to go to the moon, Daddy would have said, `Go to it, I'll help you.' ''

A Maury High School graduate, Howell studied two years in the Norfolk Division of the College of William and Mary - now Old Dominion University, transferred to the University of Virginia for a year and then entered its law school. Among other activities, he was sports co-editor of the campus daily. His fellow editor was Frank Hereford, later the university's president.

Howell also worked part time in Charlottesville reading copy and proof for Michie Law Publishing Co. He joined a law firm in Florida, and, after a year and a half, returned to Norfolk as law clerk to Federal District Judge Sterling Hutcheson, then to Federal Judge Albert V. Bryan.

Howell began practicing law in 1947 and two years later took the walk down Granby Street that led him into the Miller campaign and public service and politics.

In 1953 he lost a campaign for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates. Placing seventh in a field of nine, he polled 3,000 votes to 5,000 for the six winners and failed to carry a single black precinct. ``I found I had a lot to learn,'' he said.

He headed the Norfolk drive for the Stevenson-Kefauver presidential ticket in 1956 and tried again in 1959 for the House of Delegates. He had a new issue: opposition to Massive Resistance laws that had shut down Norfolk's white high schools for a semester in 1958-59.

``It was one of those rare issues that comes along in which people don't even look to see who's running. They vote for the person who's standing on their side,'' Howell noted. He won - and then lost again two years later by 700 votes. Ever resilient, he bounced back to the House in 1963, and he won a seat in the state Senate in 1965 and in 1967.

With a campaign based on his legal bouts for consumers against utilities and insurance companies, he entered the Democratic primary for governor in July 1969 against former Lt. Gov. Fred G. Pollard and William C. Battle, son of former Gov. John S. Battle.

Howell, mindful of polls that showed only 13 percent of the electorate knew him, came on strong with cries of ``Keep the Big Boys Honest!'' A Madison Avenue ad agency borrowed that slogan from a campaign by U.S. Sen. Warren Magnuson, and Howell originated a companion refrain: ``Something More than Santa Claus Is Slipping Around in the Dark.''

Battle polled the most votes in the primary, leading Howell by a little more than 1 percent of the vote, and he and Howell moved into a heated runoff primary in August. Pollard hinted that he preferred Howell, but Battle won narrowly.

Howell said he would vote for Battle in the general election but said he could not control his followers, who were ``free spirits.'' Many regular party members saw Howell's restraint as contributing to Battle's loss in November to Linwood Holton, who became Virginia's first Republican governor in more than a century. Much later, Howell said he had been affronted at not being invited to the head table during a harmony luncheon shortly after the August runoff primary.

In 1971, Howell came roaring back and won a three-way race for lieutenant governor, a path that opened when the Democrats' youthful rising star, J. Sargeant Reynolds, was felled by a brain tumor. The post provided Howell's starting blocks for a run for governor in 1973 against former Democratic Gov. Mills E. Godwin Jr., seeking to return to the governor's chair as a Republican.

Among the most fervent supporters in the Howell and Godwin camps, the campaign had the aspect of a holy war. In mid-September 1973, Howell, widely regarded as the underdog, released a poll that showed him leading Godwin by 9 percentage points. The disclosure spurred Godwin's forces into extra, frenzied efforts as he inched past Howell near the finish line.

Howell conceded later that he may have erred in announcing the poll's results, but he had hoped the numbers would stimulate desperately needed campaign donations.

Four years later, in a low turnout by voters for the Democratic primary for governor in 1977, Howell amassed 51.4 percent of a total vote of less than 500,000 to upset Andrew P. Miller, in whose father's campaign Howell had enlisted three decades earlier.

In November, John N. Dalton led a well-organized, rested Republican Party in amassing 55.9 percent of more than 1 million votes to defeat Howell by a margin of 158,000. Howell received 43.3 percent of the vote, receding from the peak of 1973 when, running as an independent against Godwin, he polled 49.3 percent.

While Howell was clerking for a federal judge, he married Elizabeth McCarty of Portsmouth, whom he met on a blind date. The two made a formidable team: he restless, hard-driving, gifted in phrase-making and metaphor, eloquent on the stump; she, serene, pragmatic, plain-spoken. ``He pushes me, I calm him,'' she once said. She made her first speech for him during his 1969 campaign for governor. Thereafter, a campaign aide worked up schedules for her.

In 1973, she looked up fromthe newspaper and said to him, ``Henry, I think I'll run for City Council.''

Her decision hit Howell ``like a thunderbolt,'' he recalled later.

``Betty had always been 100 percent interested in the family, the house and the dog,'' Howell marveled, ``but I told her, `Go to it! You helped me. I'll help you.' ''

She won, served 18 years, and retired from the Norfolk council in 1992. Their three children are Mary E. Howell of Norfolk, Susan H. Howell of Portsmouth, and Henry E. Howell III of Virginia Beach.

Among two dozen civic activities, Howell was superintendent of Sunday school and taught at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, in Norfolk. He was for many years a member of the Board of Visitors of Old Dominion University.

Nearly two decades ago, Howell attended as godfather the christening of Norfolk newspaperman John Coit's son. Inside the silver napkin ring that he gave his godson were engraved six words:

``Keep the Big Boys Honest, Matthew.'' ILLUSTRATION: BILL TIERNAN/File photo

DICK BUSHNELL/File photo

Norfolk's Henry E. Howell Jr. is shown in a recent photo above,

while the picture of him at left is reminiscent of the peak of his

political career, which started in 1949 when a man asked for his

help in getting Francis Pickens Miller elected governor. Miller

didn't make it, but the battle was joined for Howell who embarked on

a vigorous three decades in Virginia politics, including service in

both the House of Delegates and the state Senate - as well as a term

as lieutenant governor.

STAFF/File photo

Standing beside an old hearse, Henry Howell campaigned against